


Uncreated Night

by earlybloomingparentheses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Divergence, Fear of Death, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Relationship Development, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual compatibility issues, Thinking, a friend's description: "this is so modernist", as in: Remus and Tonks don't date and don't die, multiple eras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-08-05 04:13:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16360571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlybloomingparentheses/pseuds/earlybloomingparentheses
Summary: Remus can drift through whole worlds in his own mind. Sirius lives in his body, electric, ablaze. In 1979 and 1996 and 1978 and 1981 and in many other years and many different places, they search for the bridges between them and the spaces they can share. Time after time, they fight their way back together, head and heart, mind and body.And in 1998, Remus stands before the veil, wondering if he should finally stop thinking, and just act.





	1. The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase

**Author's Note:**

> updates on sundays.
> 
> thanks to [bigblackdog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigblackdog/pseuds/bigblackdog) for reading & listening & commenting & cheerleading. <3

**June 8, 1998**

The frayed edges of the black curtain flutter: low whispers, like wind through long grass, snake through the cold stone room: and Remus Lupin stands before the veil, contemplating death.

He is chilled to the bone in this sterile chamber, with its high ceilings and long downward slope of benches like rows in an amphitheater, like the waiting seats of an ancient tribunal. Impossible not to feel, when standing in the center of the circle at the bottom, as if a hundred invisible eyes are pinning him in place. A hundred silent judges, ready to pronounce their sentence. But the whispers: those come from behind the veil.

Those ghosts are real.

Impossible not to imagine that amongst the whispers, there is one whose voice he recognizes.

Remus steps onto the dais. He can feel the hypnotic pull of the stone archway, tugging somewhere deep in his chest. There’s a magic to it, this sensation, a power external to him that is wrapping his brain in a soft, warm haze, lowering his defenses until it seems like the easiest, the safest, the best thing to simply step forward, through the veil.

But Remus, more than most people, knows the difference between an alien hunger overtaking his mind and a hunger that comes from inside himself; so he knows that it isn’t only the veil’s magnetic pull that is drawing him close.

_What if_ , he thinks, _death isn’t the end?_

 

**January 1, 1979**

Cold air was coming in through the window frames.

“They’re shut,” Sirius said indignantly. “They’re shut _and locked_ , and look, I can still see the curtains moving.”

Remus shifted himself up, pulling the blanket with him, not wanting to lose the wrapped-tight oven-hot warmth of the little cocoon he’d made around his body. Sirius, in his crossness, had abandoned any such attempt at fending off the cold and was sitting bolt upright in the bed, chest bare, goosebumps prickling along his arms. Remus looked at the curtains. They were indeed lifting gently away from the windowpanes.

“A draught must be coming through the edges of the glass,” he said. “The panes must not be flush against the wood.”

“Outrageous,” Sirius said. “Criminal. It’s below freezing outside. And in here.”

“We’ll get some caulk,” Remus suggested. “Tomorrow, when the shops are open.”

“We’ll get some _what?_ ”

“Some caulk,” Remus replied, and then, at Sirius’ salacious grin, “oh. You arsehole.”

“I know where to find some—”

“Hey!” Remus yelped. “Your fingers are _freezing_.”

“So warm me up.”

“What a line,” said Remus, laughing. “My god.”

Sirius threw back the covers and replaced them with his own body. He straddled Remus, settling almost-too-heavy on Remus’ thighs, a solid, comforting weight that tripped the same switches in Remus’ brain as the swaddled blanket had. Something went quieter inside him, muffled, soothed by the sensation of being constricted, wrapped up tight.

Sirius nudged a finger against Remus’ nipple.

“Happy New Year,” he said, and bent to kiss it, his tongue flicking out to touch, just briefly, the brown nub. He ran his nose lightly over Remus’ chest, and Remus breathed, eyelids fluttering.

“I’m meeting James later,” Sirius murmured against his skin. “Taking the motorbike to Suffolk to see the Prewetts.”

“Better you than me,” Remus answered breathlessly, his fingers closing lightly around the nape of Sirius’ neck. “That thing’s a death trap.”

“You always say that.” Sirius bit gently along Remus’ collarbone, teeth scraping just enough to sting. Remus wriggled slightly, caught, pinned down by the weight of Sirius on his legs. “But it’s never hurt anyone before.”

“Patently untrue. The first time you took it up, it crashed in a field. You had bruises for weeks.”

“Early days. Forgiven and forgotten,” Sirius said, waving a dismissive hand. Then he pressed his fingers into Remus’ shoulder, voice going soft. “Would you like a bruise?”

Blood rushed to Remus’ groin. Sirius looked down, between Remus’ legs, and pressed harder.

“I, erm.” Remus swallowed, a little light-headed. “Can we…can you…”

“Yeah?” Sirius murmured, bending over him to lick at his earlobe, to slide his tongue over the soft rim of his ear. “What do you want, Moony?”

Remus writhed. He put his fingers wordlessly, helplessly, in Sirius’ long dark hair. “I…I don’t…”

“Do you know what you want?” Sirius’s body bowed over his, Remus flat on his back, looking up into Sirius’ dark eyes. Pinned, in more than one way.

_Sprawling on a pin—_

Remus flushed.

“Oh,” Sirius said, sitting back on his haunches. “There. What was that?”

Remus, cheeks going uncomfortably warm, tried to look away. Sirius took his chin firmly in his hand and stopped him. Remus fought the urge to close his eyes.

“Something you want?”

Remus’ tongue felt hot and heavy in his mouth. The words poured into his brain— _and I have known the eyes already, known them all_ —no dam to stop them up. And with them— _the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase_ —a sensation of being pressed, pressed in, hemmed— _and when I am formulated_ —wrapped up tight— _sprawling on a pin_ —and—and exposed, caught— _when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall_ —

And he was hard, achingly, blindingly aroused. Sirius’s weight on his legs and eyes on his face and the hot nauseous lining of embarrassment in his stomach, words stopped up by his swollen tongue but ricocheting around his mind—and Sirius—Sirius, there, real, solid, anchored to the bed and the moment and Remus only half-present, ashamed, bulged, bloated, distended by the chant-like lines echoing inside him, _eyes that fix you_ , and by the feelings they swamped him with: _pinned._

Sirius trailed fingers gently down Remus’ throat and then placed them against Remus’ closed lips—and then pushed them inside, opening his mouth.

He ran his fingers back along Remus’ tongue, till Remus had to swallow down a gag.

“Tell me,” Sirius said softly, hand still poised at the opening of Remus’ throat. As if he could pull the words up himself.

Remus tried to string together an explanation and more embarrassment prickled down his spine. He swallowed, spit pooling in the corners of his mouth, and Sirius removed his fingers, but rested them lightly on Remus’ lips.

“Just a stupid Muggle poem,” Remus muttered.

“Tell me,” Sirius said again.

Remus shook his head.

“Close your eyes, if you need to.”

Remus took a deep breath, Sirius’ fingers still wet on his mouth, and shut his eyes.

 

“ _And I have known the eyes already, known them all—_

_The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,_

_And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,_

_When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,_

_Then how should I begin_

_To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?_

_And how should I presume?”_

 

Halfway through this recitation Sirius slid his other hand down to grasp Remus’ prick.

“Pinned and wriggling?” he said softly, when Remus finished speaking.

Remus, flushed with arousal and shut-eyed close-hot shame, nodded.

“Open your eyes, love,” Sirius said, and the endearment sent Remus’ eyelids shooting upwards. Sirius worked his hand steadily, soothingly, between his legs. Remus tipped his head back, moaning, but didn’t break Sirius’ unblinking gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured after a moment.

“Don’t.” Sirius’s thumb slipped over the head of Remus’ cock. Remus inhaled sharply. “Don’t apologize. I forbid you from apologizing.” Hesitation rose up in his face. “Is that—can I—?”

Remus nodded quickly. “Yeah. Yes. But—”

Sirius leaned in close and bit his lip. “You’re not allowed.”

Arousal crested low in Remus’ belly, knocking the breath from his lungs, and he writhed, wriggled, under Sirius’ weight.

_Pinned_.

When he came it was long and slow, a luxurious wave of sensation that went on till it passed from something to be savored to something to be endured. Remus rode it out, gasping, back arching against the mattress—Sirius’ eyes fixed on his face for every drawn-out, endless second.

“My legs are asleep,” he managed, finally, to wheeze, after several catatonic minutes of lying winded on his back with Sirius stroking his heaving chest.

Sirius snorted and rolled over. Immediately, Remus nestled up next to him, pulling the blankets over them both.

“It’s a furnace in here,” Sirius complained, but he was smiling.

“I thought you were too cold.” Remus’ mouth moved against Sirius’ skin, forehead resting on his shoulder. He ran his fingers in vague loops across his side.

“That was several lines of verse ago.”

Remus went quiet, fingers stilling.

“Hey,” Sirius said. “It’s all right. You know it’s all right.”

Remus shut his eyes.

“What was that last bit?” Sirius asked after a moment. “The end of—days or something?”

“ _And how should I begin / To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?_ ”

Sirius was silent. “Do you think,” he said eventually, “that these are the butt-ends of our days and ways?”

It was New Year’s Day of 1979: darkness was wrapping itself around the world, and cold air was blowing through the cracks in their window frames, and Sirius Black had one furnace-hot hand resting on Remus’ naked hip; and how could Remus presume to answer that question?

 

**February 18, 1996**

Every Order meeting seemed to end in a fight these days, with Sirius exploding and Mad-Eye yelling back, Arthur Weasley conciliating and Minerva sharp and Nymphadora Tonks coming in with off-color jokes in an effort to jolt them back into safer waters, and Albus implacable as ever, infuriating even to Remus, who agreed with him but who hated the position he found himself having to take, silent and neutral even though he understood Sirius’ desire to take action and his need to get the hell out of Grimmauld Place. Sirius wanted to do _more_ , wanted to go on the attack, wanted to stop waiting for Voldemort to come out in the open before they began their offensive. Remus got where he was coming from but he’d have done almost anything to stop Sirius being arrested again; and the shouting gave him a headache.

Today had been particularly bad. Sometimes when the others left, Remus could calm Sirius with a hand on his chest or distract him with a hand between his legs, but today he found himself cleaning up shattered teacups in the kitchen while Sirius stormed off to fume somewhere on his own.

But when Remus finished, he couldn’t find Sirius anywhere.

He was calm as he checked the basement, worried after he’d covered the first floor, and alarmed by the time he’d reached the end of the second.

“Sirius,” he called out, yet again, hands clammy, heart racing, and muttered, “oh, fuck, fuck,” under his breath, then shouted, “Sirius, you’d better still be in this fucking house—”

He looked into every room on the third floor twice, stirring up great clouds of dust; coughing, sneezing, he cursed Sirius, the bastard, oh, god, what if he’d gone to do something reckless, what if he got caught—

Or what if he was just _gone_?

“You areshole,” Remus muttered, eyes pricking. “You _selfish_ —”

_Wait_.

Remus ground to a halt. A memory, half-formed, was poking at the back of his brain. Sirius had used to owl him letters from Grimmauld Place, sometimes, over the summer holidays—random, infrequent missives out of the blue that had sent him into a tizzy for days— _I’m writing from my secret hiding place, my mum will be furious when she can’t find me, serves her right after what she said at dinner—_

Remus hurried toward the end of the corridor, and the big diamond-paned window with the big iron latch.

The latch had already been thrown open. Remus pushed on the glass and the window swung outward, letting a gust of chill winter air into the house. Remus stuck his head out, surveying the outer walls. Sure enough, a series of metal bars—decorative in appearance, but forming the carefully concealed rungs of a ladder—stretched upwards, toward the roof.

Remus glanced down at the ground below, a brown patch of grass three stories away, then swung himself out the window. The cold bars stung his hands. Finally, his head rose above the edge of the roof, and there he was: Sirius Black, stretched out on the shingles, staring into the grey sky.

He looked at Remus, but said nothing.

Remus looked back.

Then he climbed back down into the house.

Several minutes later and a little bit calmer, he returned up the ladder, a large mug of hot cider clutched carefully in one hand.

He hoisted himself up. Grimmauld Place was attached to the houses on either side, but its roof rose above theirs, a peaked, shingled slope at just enough of an angle to require caution. Gingerly, Remus picked his way over to Sirius and sat. He offered Sirius the cider.

Sirius shook his head.

“It’s got Firewhiskey in it,” Remus said.

He could see the moment Sirius softened slightly: his jaw unclenching, his shoulders inching downward. He took the mug and sipped.

Any concession from Sirius these days was a victory. Since Christmas, he’d been stalking around Grimmauld Place glaring at all the windows and doors like they were personally responsible for his being shut up there. If he’d directed all his anger towards wood and glass they might have managed, but Sirius had always been more like a tidal wave or uncontained fire than any sort of focused destruction and for months now Remus had been bearing the brunt of his overflowing resentment. He was exhausted, and really the only thing that made him feel better was that he suspected Sirius was exhausting himself, too.

Sirius handed the mug back to Remus, and Remus took a drink.

“Apparently Harry took a girl to Hogsmeade for Valentine’s Day.”

It was a clear conversational peace offering but Remus, unable to help himself, looked sharply at Sirius. “How do you—”

“Don’t worry, I haven’t been sending him owls.” There was a bitter edge to his voice when he said, “I got it thirdhand, as I get everything about Harry these days. Tonks heard from Rosmerta, who heard it from Eleanor Puddifoot.”

“He took this girl to _Madam Puddifoot’s_?”

“So I heard.”

“My god,” said Remus, appalled, “why on earth would he do that?”

Sirius shrugged. “Girls are supposed to like that sort of thing, aren’t they? Doilies, too much pink. Tiny tea cakes.”

“Oh, an expert, are you?” Remus said, and risked a smile.

But Sirius looked away, frowning. He took another drink and Remus picked at a piece of lint on the knee of his trousers.

“Did she say who the girl was?”

“No.”

Remus nodded. He tipped his head back and stared up into the grey sky, letting its vastness swallow up a little bit of his hurt. In his head he knew that Sirius wasn’t angry with _him_ , but at times it was very difficult to remain convinced of this. The barbs in Sirius’ voice were sharp. He wanted to remind him that they were on the same side, that they always had been, that in fact Remus was possibly the last person in the world who was completely and totally _for Sirius_ ; but he was afraid that Sirius didn’t quite believe this anymore, would, like a dog (and Remus felt guilty for the comparison) only recognize loyalty when it took the immediate form of instant gratification. _Give me a bone. Let me outside._ Remus couldn’t bring himself to support Sirius’ desires to “fuck Albus Dumbledore and fuck the Order and just get the fuck out of here for one single night.” He bore the memory of twelve lonely years too deep in his bones to take that risk. Of course, Sirius did too. That was why he wanted out.

“She left in tears, though. Harry’s date.”

“Oh,” said Remus. “Oh, no.”

“This summer,” Sirius said, “I’m giving him lessons.”

“ _Lessons_?”

“On ‘How Not to Make your Date Cry.’”

Remus laughed.

“‘How to Choose a Proper Date Location.’” Sirius drummed his fingers on the roof tiles. “‘When to Go in for the First Snog.’”

“As a former Hogwarts professor, I’m not sure I can condone this. Considering your track record.”

“My track record?”

“I don’t want you encouraging half-baked gropes in the Hogwarts library after hours,” Remus said.

Sirius grinned at him, yellowed teeth bared in real warmth, and Remus felt the chill of the winter air recede slightly. He scooted closer to Sirius, hip nudging comfortably against his.

“It wasn’t half-baked,” Sirius said.

Remus snorted. “You planned to kiss me that night, did you? That was, what, right on schedule?”

“I wanted to kiss you. I didn’t plan it.” He dipped his head and put his lips on Remus’ neck. His nose was cold. Remus sucked in a breath.

“There’s no schedule,” Sirius murmured. “There never has been. Just wanting you.”

No schedule. Yes. And a good thing too, thought Remus, because by any possible reckoning, their timeline, their life chronologies, had been well and truly fucked a number of times over. It was in fact nothing short of incredible that they had managed to work themselves back to this place, sitting shoulder to shoulder again, even if they had had to go back to Sirius’ horrible childhood home to do so, even if they were trapped in some sort of agonizing stasis, preparing for another war that reminded Remus so much of the first one.

He felt Sirius draw back, just a little, and looked at him with trepidation, worried that he was receding into his anger again. But Sirius’ face looked uncharacteristically hesitant.

“What is it?”

Sirius looked into the half-full mug of cider but didn’t take a drink. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He darted a quick look at Remus, whose stomach turned over uneasily.

“We’ll have to tell him sooner or later.”

Remus, for a moment, didn’t understand.

“He’s dating, himself, now. He’s old enough to know.”

Abruptly, Remus turned his head away.

“Surely everyone has a gay uncle these days,” Sirius said. There was a pleading note in his voice that Remus would have put down to purposeful manipulation if it had been just slightly easier to detect. “He’ll have two. More or less.”

“It’s just,” Remus began, and he saw Sirius’ fingers clench. Guilt washed sour through his stomach.

He guessed that Sirius thought he’d been refusing to entertain the subject since they’d started things up again. It wasn’t true. Remus had thought and thought and thought about it, about telling Harry, about letting Sirius tell Harry. About telling Molly and Arthur Weasley, Albus, Minerva, Ted and Andromeda Tonks. Mundungus Fletcher. The barman at the local. Strangers on the street. He had thought about simply slipping his hand into Sirius’ at the dinner table and waiting till everyone noticed. He had thought about kissing him at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

It was just that Harry looked so much like James.

Remus pushed that aside, pushed aside that particular memory, and let himself flip through the gallery of other anxieties he viewed sometimes behind his closed eyelids at night. As a sort of penance, he landed on one that cut particularly deep, a bruise below his skin. He’d never said it aloud before.

“He’ll ask us if we’re ill.”

Sirius, unexpectedly, gave a derisive snort, and for a moment Remus was stung. “I think he’s smart enough to know being bent isn’t a disease, whatever shit his Muggle relatives shoved into his head growing up.”

Oh. Remus pressed his forehead gently against his knees. He was feeling the cold again, biting through his worn sweater. “That’s not what I meant.”

For a second Sirius frowned at him. Then his face went quite blank. In a flat tone, he said, “Hard to contract HIV in Azkaban.” He lay back, away from Remus, speaking up into the gray sky. “Or when you’re being unaccountably faithful for thirteen years to a man you believe is a murderer.”

Remus’ breath caught. He turned his head away, mastering the tears that swam suddenly at the corners of his eyes.

“You can be very cruel these days, Sirius,” he said quietly.

After a long silence, Sirius reached rapidly down and grabbed Remus’ hand. He squeezed.

Remus couldn’t bring himself to squeeze back.

“I didn’t ask you to do that,” Sirius said softly. “I was in prison. You didn’t have to be.”

Startled, involuntary, Remus’ head turned; he sat up; he looked down at Sirius full in the face, eyes wide.

“I…”

It was one of those moments: when Remus was hit full-on, blindsided, by the force of realization that once again a person he felt as close to as the tender insides of his elbows or the brush of eyelashes against his cheeks _didn’t know_ : didn’t know all of him, the landscape of his mind and heart, the crisscrossing byways and valleys and hollows of what he had thought and felt and wanted: because he hadn’t told them.

“It wasn’t like that,” Remus said, inadequately, horribly. “It—I wasn’t—”

_Punishing myself,_ he wanted to say, except in the ways that he was; _in prison_ , except all those days he locked his door and refused to step outside; _purposely avoiding sleeping with anyone else_ —but—that was true, only not entirely.

The thing was, and how awful to even think of admitting this to Sirius, there were pleasures, too. His own close company; his own hands on his body. Intimacies he couldn’t articulate. Worlds of open space, in his tiny rooms, his claustrophobic surroundings. He had passed twelve undeniably narrow years. And yet.

“You’re doing it,” Sirius said quietly. “Drifting away.”

Remus, feeling choked, nodded a little and his fingers spasmed, squeezing Sirius’ hand, finally. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“But I _am_ sorry.”

“I can’t follow you into your head,” Sirius said after a moment. “That’s all. And I know I’ve been a prick, these last few months. I fucking—believe me, I fucking know that. But all this house is for me, Remus, is an airless box. I can’t—you’re probably looking up at those clouds and—and feeling like you’re up there. Or floating somewhere, right? Escaping into your own head. But I don’t…I _can’t_. I’m here. This is it. This house, these walls—”

“We can tell him.” Remus let it out in a rush, before he could stop himself. “Harry. You’re right. I’m being selfish.”

Sirius sighed a little and rubbed his fingers into his eyes. “I didn’t mean to bully you. If you’re not ready—”

“No,” Remus answered. “You’re right. Harry’s what—what you have. He should know.”

Remus could tell that Sirius was trying to hide the hope in his voice when he said, “Really?”

Remus nodded, guilty again. “Just…can we tell him in person? Or—or you, if you want to do it—if you want to do it by yourself—”

“No. Together.” Sirius ran his hand through Remus’ hair and kissed him hard. “Idiot. And yeah, in person. Of course.”

“This summer?”

“This summer.”

They huddled up together but the sky was darkening and the wind was picking up.

“Can we go inside?” Remus asked finally, as his teeth started to chatter.

“Yeah,” said Sirius. “Yes, I guess we should.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title & quotes from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."


	2. Would breathing thro' his lips impart

**June 8, 1998**

The veil whispers to Remus with breath he can almost feel on his cheek.

The dead don’t breathe, he knows that. He’s only imagining the movement of air on his skin.

He imagines not breathing. He looks at the veil and he imagines it sucking his breath towards it, pulling it from his body. Imagines the encroaching darkness.

For a long moment the thought is comfortable. Warm. Then terror spikes through him.

He doesn’t want the darkness. He wants to breathe, and breathe, and breathe. He wants to keep breathing, forever.

 

**February 7, 1994**

Minerva McGonagall waylaid Remus on the way to breakfast.

“A word,” she said, and Remus’ heart plummeted.

Once they had reached her office she spoke. “It’s about Sirius Black.”

Of course it was. Remus swallowed down a surge of anxious anticipation and steeled himself for the worst.  _ They’ve caught him.  _ Or:  _ They know he’s an Animagus. Can you tell us anything about that?  _ Or:  _ He’s dead. _

“They’ve decided to administer the Dementor’s Kiss. Once they catch him.”

Ah. Remus nodded calmly. “I was expecting that,” he said. Minerva looked at him, lips pursed, clearly waiting for something more. Nothing more would be forthcoming, Remus thought. He had been waiting for this news since Sirius’ escape. And he was compartmentalizing more than he ever had before: his fears, guilt, anger, and regret were all locked up tight in a corner of his brain that he refused to visit. So. Sirius would receive the Kiss. Remus lifted a shoulder, his gaze meeting Minerva’s evenly, and then he felt his head go light and his knees buckled.

“Steady on,” she said, startled, and grasped him by the elbows. She maneuvered him into a chair and he fought to keep his grip on consciousness.

“Breathe,” he heard her say, as if from very far off. “Take deep breaths…” 

She kept speaking but Remus’ brain was full of cotton and his vision was swimming. Breathing did not seem possible. Dark shapes floated before his eyes and he had a moment of visceral terror before he slid to the floor and passed out.

Deathlike darkness.

A wisp of light across his vision.

The ghostly imprint of lips on his. Breathing into his mouth.

_ It’s a kiss,  _ said Sirius’ voice.

_ Almost a kiss _ , Remus tried to reply, but the words came out garbled, and he heard the growing sound of a rattling breath, coming closer. A sudden press of cold, scabbed fingers against his throat—the smell of death—and Remus shot upright, hands scrabbling at the floor, heaving in great gulps of air.

“Remus.  _ Remus. _ ” Minerva’s voice cut sharply through his panic. She held him firmly by the shoulders. Slowly, he stopped thrashing. He put his fingers to his lips, feeling the air passing through them, and stared at her.

“Do you need the hospital wing?” she asked.

All at once he was horribly embarrassed.

“No, no,” he muttered hastily. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

He tried to get to his feet but winced as his head pounded, a sharp knifelike pulse deep in his temple. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Of course you do.” Her tone was brisk. Her hands still held him in place, stopping him from getting up or falling down. “And there’s no shame in it.”

No shame. But of course there was. Shame was the hot liquid underside of Remus’ every move and thought and dream these days, a poisonous leakage from the tight box that held his memories, damp and spreading. Shame got into his throat and made it hard to breathe at night. He should be doing more, now. He should have done something more, then. He should have known.

“I’m shocked you’ve been holding up this well, frankly,” Minerva said. She shook her head, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening. “Returning to Hogwarts this year, of all years. You must see their ghosts around every corner.”

After a moment Remus let out a breath. “I do,” he admitted hoarsely. “In every room.”

 

**October 22, 1976**

The Hogwarts library was big and silent after hours. Darkness pressed against the windows and crept between the shelves; the weathered bindings of the old books looked still and solemn, and the smell of aging parchment was stronger when unmixed with anxious student sweatiness and Madame Pince’s heavy perfume. Sitting at his favorite familiar table in the corner in the gold glow of a single lamp, Remus felt stretched between two poles: the shadow-wrapped calm of scholarly solitude, and a nervy stomach-roiling overstimulation that was somehow both nauseating and guiltily thrilling. Five or six books lay open in front of him and ten or eleven more were stacked in piles behind them. He ran his eyes over their titles, which even taken together didn’t quite give away what they had—or might have—in common. Or maybe they did, depending on who was reading. Remus reached out and touched their spines, feeling as his fingers brushed against the cloth and leather that he was in that moment of contact looping himself into their invisible network, sharing a secret spark of intimacy, of  _ knowing _ —

Or maybe he was getting a little too worked up.

He swallowed down the sour-sweet pulse of excitement and fear and turned his gaze back to the small, regular text of the yellowing book that lay closest to him. The words marched across the page in neat regimented lines and for a second it seemed impossible that they could generate the chaotic spark fizzing through his veins.

A sound of approaching footsteps cut across the stillness of the room, and Remus’ pulse sped up, face flushing. He quickly shut a couple of books and pulled a piece of parchment towards him, poising his quill over the page as if about to write.

“Remus?” hissed a familiar voice.

Equal parts relieved and annoyed, Remus peered into the darkness. “Are you under the cloak?”

A quick noise of footsteps getting closer, and Sirius’ head and then body appeared out of thin air. His hair was sticking up all over, mussed by static electricity. Fondness pulsed through Remus, annoying him further.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you. I tried the kitchens first. You went out after hours without the cloak, I didn’t want you to get caught.”

“I’m allowed to be out. I’ve got permission,” he said, exasperated, nervous. This was Sirius all over: well-meaning and haphazard, dashing into things and playing the hero and trying in his show-off-y way to help, stumbling into Remus’ carefully maintained circle of quiet, and Remus couldn’t even manage to be properly firm about it because it was touching, really, even if it was encroaching into what had felt like the most sacred and secret of moments, a precious hour he’d never get back.

“How do you have permission?”

“I told McGonagall I needed a little extra time in the library to finish the essay for tomorrow, since the full moon was this past weekend.”

Sirius frowned. “You finished that essay on Thursday.”

How did Sirius always know these things? “Er, I need to do a little more research…”

Sirius narrowed his eyes at the stack of books. “Are these for Transfiguration? They don’t look like it.” He grinned suddenly, delight lighting up his face. “What are you up to, Moony? Looking up forbidden spells? Combing through old books to find the dirty bits?”

He reached out and Remus’ stomach dropped, hard. “No, I—Sirius, don’t—”

“ _ Merlin’s Beard: Wizarding Scandals in Nineteenth-Century Britain.  _ You  _ are  _ looking for dirty bits!”

Sirius flipped the book back over to where Remus had it open and Remus tried to reach for it but Sirius pulled it back, reading aloud with a laugh in his voice: “‘ _ The Perkins Square Scandal was set in motion in October of 1883 when the young Lord Fitzowen was found in bed with the heir of the Earl of Devonshire, his eldest…son…Edmund Graham.’”  _ Sirius’ voice trailed off. Slowly, his eyes lifted from the page to meet Remus’. Frozen, entirely incapable of speech and trapped in the single thought that perhaps he could still get out of this, Remus looked helplessly back.

Sirius reached out for another open book.

“‘ _ He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they followed his pipe, laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes _ .’”

Quickly, Remus wrenched his own gaze from Sirius’. His blood thrummed in his ears. He felt shaky and wired, like the first time he’d drunk Peter’s mum’s coffee, black and alarmingly strong. The words seemed to echo in the dark room, and to burrow deep into Remus’ chest, telling, damning.

Slowly, Sirius chose another book.

“‘ _ Sphere all your lights around, above; _

_ Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; _

_ Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, _

_ My friend, the brother of my love; _

_ “‘My Arthur, whom I shall not see _

_ Till all my widow’d race be run; _

_ Dear as the mother to the son, _

_ More than my brothers are to me.’” _

Remus’ face was hot. His fingers twitched, wanting to wrench the books from Sirius’ hands, to shut them all tight and take them away—to hide them, or to keep them safe, he wasn’t sure. He looked at Sirius, then away, then at him again, eyes flicking from surface to surface, unable to settle. Finally they landed on the table in front of him and he stared, unblinking, waiting.

“Do you think you might…like boys?” Sirius asked quietly.

Remus, panic thick in the back of his throat, nodded. Then he added, quickly—“But I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t know. Yet. I—it might just be—” He breathed through his nose. “I…”

“You’re trying to figure it out. With these books.”

Remus nodded again, squeezing his eyes shut. “Yes.”

“And do you…” Sirius’ tone was odd, odd enough that Remus had to look right at him to try and decipher his expression. It was odd, too. “Do you think that will work?”

Remus blinked. “Well,” he said slowly, still watching Sirius and waiting for the hammer to fall, “I’m not sure how else to figure it out.”

Sirius’ eyebrows shot up. He laughed, a few loud huffs of breath. “How about, you know, the usual way?”

“The usual way?”

Sirius shrugged, one-shouldered, and said in a suspiciously nonchalant voice, “By trying it out. By…snogging Gideon Prewitt in a broom cupboard. For example.”

Remus stared at him. “By—what? A broom cupboard? But how—and—and why Gideon Prewitt?”

Sirius bit his lip and looked away, then back at Remus again, jutting his chin out in what might have been defiance. “Because he was the first bloke who flirted back.”

For a moment incomprehension swamped Remus, a basic inability to process what Sirius had said. Then his brain rose out of the murk and he stared, shocked, at his friend.

“Do you mean  _ you— _ ”

Sirius nodded.

“But…” Remus fumbled for coherence. “When?”

“A few weeks ago.”

Remus gaped at him. His stomach churned. That volatile, unsteady feeling was raging inside him, a firework fuse a breath away from the flame. How—he’d thought he’d known Sirius, to the point of utter predictability, but he’d never suspected—and something in the back of his throat was making it hard to swallow—and—

“And?” he demanded of Sirius.

“And…” Sirius tossed his hair back, trying for devil-may-care, and then ruined the effect by flattening it down immediately with his hand. “And it’s too bad I hadn’t known you were wondering the same thing, ’cause then I could have tried it on with you in a broom cupboard.”

He flashed Remus a grin.

Remus stomach twisted and he looked rapidly at his knees, heart pounding.

“I’d never have known I liked it if all I’d done was read some books,” Sirius pressed, some of the mischief going out of his voice. “I mean, you can’t possibly think that—”

“Listen.” The word slipped out of Remus before he could hold it in. He swallowed, and pulled one of the books closer to him. “So—this is about the poet’s dead best friend. Just—just listen.”

He took a breath and began to read aloud.

“‘ _ And yet, ev’n yet, if this might be, _

_ I, falling on his faithful heart, _

_ Would breathing thro’ his lips impart _

_ The life that almost dies in me; _

_ “‘That dies not, but endures with pain, _

_ And slowly forms the firmer mind, _

_ Treasuring the look it cannot find, _

_ The words that are not heard again. _ ’”

He stumbled over the first few lines, nervous and embarrassed. The awareness of Sirius listening, potentially unmoved, uncomprehending, made Remus feel foolish—somewhere between childish and pretentious, between naked and hopelessly obscured. His face grew hot.

But the words took over, and in the darkness they began to ring out around him like an old spell. The shape of certain phrases fell clear and true into the silence, compelling and intimately familiar:  _ Falling on his faithful heart.  _ The pronoun,  _ his,  _ seemed to resonate with meaning, hushed and lovely, rich with secret import that Remus was already learning to understand.  _ Treasuring the look it cannot find.  _ He  _ knew  _ those words, that feeling, recognized it, stumbling with half-opened eyes towards the thing it held, the thing it  _ meant _ . The ache of it, the painful wanting. His skin hummed with it. His whole body strained towards it.

He stopped reading. Sirius was looking at him, face half shadowed in the darkness.

“Don’t you—” Remus said, a little desperately. “Doesn’t it  _ feel _ —”

“It’s very sad.”

His voice was quiet. His eyes lingered on Remus.

“Yes. Yes, but…do you…”

“Maybe a little,” Sirius said. “Hearing you read it.”

“It’s—it’s just—it’s like I can feel— _ something _ —” Helpless, peeled open by Sirius’ strange steady gaze, he turned back to the poem: “' _ Would breathing thro’ his lips impart / The life that almost dies in me.'  _ It’s—the sound of it, the—the image—”

“A kiss,” Sirius said. “It’s a kiss.”

Remus flushed again, warm and agitated by the sound of the words on Sirius’ lips. “Almost a kiss,” he answered.

“He wants to breathe his own life into his friend’s mouth to save his friend’s life. I’d say that’s a kiss, Remus.”

He wanted Sirius to stop saying  _ kiss _ . He wanted his pulse to even out. He wanted—

“Is this…” Sirius began slowly, eyes narrowed, still,  _ still  _ stuck on Remus’ face, “so you’re saying that this, for you, this kiss, it’s like—like me kissing Gideon.”

Unconsciously, Remus rubbed a damp palm over his knee. The image of Sirius and Gideon bloomed before his eyes: a tangle of tongues, lips, breaths;  _ breathing thro’ his lips _ ; but he thought he understood, dimly, what Sirius meant.

“Maybe,” he said. “I think maybe it is.”

Sirius nodded. “So, er,” he said, and all at once he broke his gaze. He looked down at the table, prodding the books with his fingers, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, as a sort of half-grin nudged its way to his face. “So, that means you—you’re sure. About. You know.”

Remus swallowed. “Well. I. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

“So you don’t, er, need to—you wouldn’t want to—test it out.”

Remus blinked. “What?”

“Testing a theory.” Sirius’ crooked grin widened. “You know.”

Remus shook his head. Maybe the hugeness of what he had just confirmed was fogging his brain. Tennyson’s words were still echoing in his head, muddying his thoughts.

“Merlin, Moony.” Good-natured exasperation mingled with mischievousness and maybe something else, the cocky tilt of Sirius’ chin and some lingering shadow in his eyes. “I’m asking if you want to have a snog.”

Remus went hot. His stomach turned over and an undeniable warmth passed through him, from the tips of his toes through his legs and into his belly. “I—I—you mean,” he said stupidly, “you mean actually—actually—”

“Actually kiss. Yeah.”

Remus stared at Sirius, then down at his lap. One of his hands was clasped around the other wrist, moving anxiously up and down. He stilled the movement. “I—” he said. “I…”

“Only if you want,” Sirius said quickly, some of the assurance leaving his voice. “I just thought—well, why not?”

_ Why not _ , Remus thought, dazed. As if you could just do it. Just kiss someone. As if it were that easy to take thoughts and make them into actions.

Or to not think at all.

His hand was moving anxiously down his arm again. He made it stop. Then he snapped his head up quickly to look at Sirius and gave a single short nod. “Yes.”

Sirius grinned. It might have been relief flashing through his face for a moment, or just a return of his usual attitude of self-assurance.

After a helpless moment of just sitting looking up at Sirius, Remus made himself get to his feet. But he couldn’t move closer.

Sirius did it, closing the gap between them like it was nothing, only a matter of taking a few steps.

Remus realized he was holding his breath. He let it out, too loudly.

“Remus, this—” Fond exasperation settled onto Sirius’ face. “This isn’t supposed to be an ordeal.”

Remus squirmed, embarrassment rising through him. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m—I’m just—nervous.” He was so close to Sirius. He could feel the warmth of him.

“Don’t be. It’s not that big of a—”

“It’s just that—”

“You don’t have to—”

“I’ve never—”

“Oh, god. Is this—are you worried about being—”

“No, I—wait, what—?”

“Because it doesn’t—so maybe you’re bent, maybe you’re not, but—”

“No, it’s not that—”

“Blokes do this all the time at school—oh. Then what—?”

“It isn’t that.” Remus felt like he might die of embarrassment. This was the least erotic attempt at a snog that had ever happened in the history of the world. “It’s okay. It’s okay, I just—kissing someone.”

“Oh.” Sirius said. And then for some reason his face relaxed into a smile, warm, genuine. “Well, that’s the easy part.”

“Not for—”

And then Sirius leaned in and pressed his lips to Remus’. They were warm and dry and after a second Remus jerked back, heart leaping to his throat.

Sirius’ eyes flicked up and down, surveying him, and then he put his hand around the back of Remus’ head and pulled him back in. He held Remus there with a firm grip as he moved his lips against Remus’, and for a moment Remus felt pathetically grateful for the inability to move away. After a few long seconds of this he worked up the confidence to kiss back.

_ I like this _ , he thought hazily. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with the rest of his body, but the feel of Sirius’ nose against his face and his hand steady at the back of his head was startlingly natural. Sirius’ tongue in his mouth gave him a bit of a shock but then—oh.  _ Oh. _

He let out a helpless, muffled noise and felt Sirius grin against his mouth.

Remus’ awareness narrowed, his world shrinking to a tiny sphere: the lantern-light, Sirius’ fingers settling on his chest, the after-hours hush of the library, the opening up of his mouth and his throat as Sirius’ tongue pushed farther in, the stacks of books, the not-quite-pleasant taste of spit, the invisible circle of meaning and history weaving around them,  _ his lips _ ,  _ his faithful heart _ ; and Remus sank further into it, going soft, going quiet.

He let Sirius lead, relaxing into the kiss, the moment. Sirius pulled him closer, chest to chest, and despite the awkward stumble of his feet and the way his nose sometimes got in the way Remus could sense something syncing up between them, his pliancy, Sirius’ hunger.

“Shit,” Sirius said eventually, breathing hard, pulling away just a little. “Shit, Remus.”

Remus nodded. He let his fingers move lightly against the edge of Sirius’ collar. He could see Sirius’ Adam’s apple bob in response.

“Don’t stop,” he said softly.

Sirius met his lips again and both of them exhaled, a sudden breath passing between them.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H." also quoted: Oscar Wilde's _The Picture of Dorian Gray._


	3. The spreading wide my narrow Hands

**June 8, 1998**

Remus can imagine everything except death.

He can cast his mind backward, as he stands in front of the veil, to the day he met Sirius and the day Sirius fell through it; he can cast it forward, into some miraculous future where Sirius steps back into this room and into his arms, or into some more likely future where, now that the war is over and his duties are done, he moves back into his seaside house and lives there in solitude for the rest of his life; and he can cast it sideways, into impossible fantasies and daydreams and fears. But Remus does not believe that anything happens after death, once consciousness has winked out and the body is just body, so he cannot picture it. Cannot map out its edges and lines.

He thinks of a pit of darkness, but even that is too much. No darkness. No light. Neither black nor white. Because there would be nothing to _see_ , and, more importantly, no eyes to see it with.

No eyes, no ears, no sense of touch or smell or taste. No sensation of air on the skin. No air; no skin.

But even once Remus has tried to imagine himself in a colorless void with no senses at all, it is still wrong. What he would have to do to is snuff out his capacity to imagine.

He can’t imagine not imagining. It’s a paradox, an impossibility. Yet the closer he gets to it, the more he flips off the switches in his mind, the dizzier he starts to get, the closer to that faint echo of death, unconsciousness, and then air rushes into his lungs and blood and brain and he gasps, desperate to breathe, to feel, to think.

 

**Dec. 9, 1977**

The fire in the Gryffindor common room was warm and bright enough to banish the onset of night. Remus sat with his friends, as he did most days after classes now, unwinding before plunging into his homework. Today their customary mood of relaxed hilarity had taken on a higher key than usual, for two reasons: one, the end of the year was nearing and that meant they had a single semester left till N.E.W.T.s (and thus academic panic) and graduation (and thus panic, generally); and two, Lily Evans was sitting next to James on the sofa, one crossed knee digging gently into his leg. This was a new enough phenomenon that the rhythm of their conversation was still stumbling a little, James alternating between long awed pauses that suggested he’d been mildly Stunned and bursts of chatter when he remembered that he could and should speak; Peter giggling every time James accidentally brushed against Lily and jumped; and Sirius simmering with a peculiar mix of amusement, pride, jealousy, and what seemed to be good-natured shock and outrage that after years of spectacular striking out James had actually pulled this off.

Remus got on quite well with Lily, as they had been Prefects together the year before, and every now and then they found themselves meeting each other’s eyes and having to stifle their laughter.

“All I’m saying is that it’s an actual thing,” James was insisting as Sirius shook his head vehemently in response. “No, it is, really.”

“Absolutely not. I absolutely do not believe that.”

“It’s true! I read about it.”

“Maybe Muggle _kids_ do it—”

“Grown-ups. I mean adults. It’s a whole career. You can study it.”

“Like, in _school_?”

“You can get famous for it!”

Peter’s head was whipping back and forth as he watched James and Sirius bicker. James was getting pink in the face and it was very obvious to Remus that Sirius was goading him on.

“Anyway, the point is,” James pressed, “is that the stuff we learned in Defense Against the Dark Arts today, I bet there are wizards who use it for that.”

Sirius put on such an over-the-top look of incredulity that Remus was surprised James didn’t immediately catch on. “You’re saying that not only are there Muggles whose job is to _pretend they can do magic_ , but that there are wizards whose job is to _pretend they are Muggles pretending to do magic_?”

James threw up his hands. “I’m just saying that _maybe_ —please, Lily, back me up here—”

Lily opened her mouth, looking for a moment as if she were about to say something very judicious and thoughtful, but then a laugh escaped and she buried her face in her hands. That set Peter off, and Sirius arched an eyebrow at Remus, who covered his mouth and looked quickly away.

“Arseholes,” James said, realization dawning on his face. “You’re all of you having me on.” He immediately adopted a (clearly well-practiced) expression of wounded dignity.

Lily squeezed his elbow gently, and though her face was still pink with laughter, James immediately melted, giving her a soppy smile.

“Of course there are Muggles who pretend to do magic,” she said. “I had one at my sixth birthday party. And some of them do all that stuff—getting out of handcuffs and locked boxes and tanks of water. It seems possible that a few of them might be real wizards.”

“ _Thank_ you,” said James. He glared at Sirius.

“Muggles are mad, that’s all I’m saying,” Sirius said with unrepentant cheerfulness. “Er. No offense, Evans.”

She shrugged. “No madder than wizards. Anyway, that’s a much nicer thing to think about using those spells for than what Professor Corvus was talking about.”

_A nicer thing to think about._ Remus swallowed. The years of witch hunts and witch burnings were bad ones for the wizarding world, but mostly because of the paranoia, not the violence; as their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher had explained, real witches and wizards had learned spells to escape from prisons, stocks, and ropes—not to mention the infamous Flame-Freezing Charm. Still, it was not a particularly nice thing to think about. Except…

“What are stocks?” Peter asked suddenly. “Corvus kept mentioning stocks. I thought stocks were some Muggle money thing.”

“Ah, Pete.” Sirius shook his head, grinning. “Such innocence. Remus, give that here.”

Remus tossed his textbook to Sirius. He was sitting in a big overstuffed armchair, knees pulled to his chest and a thick blanket draped over his legs. He felt warm. He felt held, somehow. And…

“These are stocks.” Sirius shoved the book at Peter. “They’re, like, sort of a torture device? Well, not torture, exactly. Punishment.”

“Your head goes in the middle hole,” James supplied. “And your wrists in the ones on either side.”

“There’s a drawing, Prongs, he can see how it works.”

“But why?” Peter asked.

“It’s about public humiliation,” Lily said. “And physical discomfort, of course, but the worst part is that they’d put these in town squares and people would have to stand in them and all the villagers would see them there.”

“Ugh,” said Peter, squirming. “That’s horrible.”

Remus didn’t squirm, but he felt like it.

He felt like squirming, but he held himself still.

He held himself still and cupped inside him the little flicker of the thing he was feeling. Or maybe it was less a feeling and more a…sensation. A sort of dropping. Or a pooling, low in his belly. Lower, probably.

Each time he pictured the drawing of the witch in the stocks something pulsed through him. A kind of fizzling outward in his chest, like eyes flung open wide in sudden surprise and wonder. An ache shooting through the arches of his feet. And a sort of concentrated rush, there and then gone, in his rear, where it pressed up against the cushion of the chair.

Remus breathed through it and kept his face mild and attentive.

“Bet Filch’d love to reintroduce the stocks at Hogwarts,” James said. “A little public humiliation sounds just up his alley.”

“Bet he’d get off on it,” Sirius said, giving a salacious grin.

“Ugh,” Peter repeated.

Remus’ pulse skipped a beat. A fragment unfolded in his head—

_Tomorrow morning. I got caught. And tomorrow morning—_

_In front of everyone._

_Yes._

_All those eyes—_

_Yes._

_It’s all right. You’ll be all right._

_I can’t—_

_You can. I know you can._

_I just want—to—to hide—_

_Come here. Come here. Let me—_

“Honestly, I think those Flame-Freezing Charms were a bit iffy,” Sirius said, stretching out his legs and raising his eyebrows. “That what’s-her-name the Weird—”

“Wendelin,” James interjected.

“She let herself be caught _forty-seven times_ . She was burned at the stake _forty-seven times_. You really think she did that all for ‘a pleasant tickling sensation’?”

“Sirius,” James said, clearly struggling between an urge to laugh and a desire not to appear immature before Lily.

“It must have been _very_ pleasant, is all I’m saying.” He shot Remus a swift, sudden glance, a smirk twisting the corners of his lips, and Remus, jolted slightly out of his warm little headspace, flushed. Sirius looked away, smirk widening.

“It’s no wonder you’ve not got a girlfriend, if a Flame-Freezing Charm is your idea of a good time,” Lily said, shaking her head in mock disapproval. “You know most girls don’t actually think being set on fire is a way of flirting.”

Awkward silence bloomed suddenly through the room. James opened his mouth, then closed it. Peter grew very interested in the floorboards. After a moment, the smile slid off Lily’s face.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a rush, looking confused. “If I said something wrong. I didn’t…”

“You were just adopting the local language,” Sirius said lightly. “It’s all right. They’re all just embarrassed they didn’t think of it themselves. James, you’d better up your insult game, mate.”

James let out a laugh that came out more like a cough. Lily’s cheeks were still pink, but she smiled uncertainly.

Remus avoided the meaningful look Peter was now trying to throw at him and picked at the pilled fabric of the blanket. It was fine. It wasn’t the first time someone had made a comment like that. But it always hurt more than Remus wanted to admit, a stabbing twist through his stomach at the reminder of what, much of the time, he managed to forget: that something so important to him was something invisible, nonexistent, to most people. That what happened to him at the full moon was not his only secret.

He pulled himself back to his body, to the warm haze that he’d felt surrounded by since the Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. It was three parts pleasurable and one part worrisome, this odd sensation—a kind of blanketing low-level arousal that wasn’t quite just arousal. Images, scenarios, flitted around the corners of his consciousness. The picture of the witch in the stocks. Her head bowed. Caught. Maybe it was a little bit bad that the history of public humiliation and violence around witchcraft sent him into such a pleasurable state. He just felt sort of…calmed, and yet at the same time not calm at all.

_Come here. Let me—just—_

_Oh._

_That’s it. I’ve got you._

_When Filch puts me up there tomorrow—_

_Everyone will be watching. I know. But…so will I._

“I’ve got to get ready for Quidditch practice,” James said. “Sorry, gang.”

“We’ll survive without you,” Sirius said. “Maybe.”

“We’ll do our best to carry on,” Peter chimed in.

From his chair, Remus smiled at James as he rose. Lily, still a little flustered, made her excuses as well.

“What’s up, Moony?” Sirius asked when they’d both gone. “You’re being awfully quiet.”

“Oh, I—” he said. There was nothing he could say aloud and he wasn’t sure he could articulate what was happening to him, anyway. “Just…tired, maybe.”

Sirius stretched out a leg and nudged Remus’ blanket-covered foot. “Anything in particular happening in that head of yours?”

Remus hesitated. “Not…well…”

“Balls,” Peter said suddenly. “Oh, buggering fucking shit.”

“Merlin, Pete,” Sirius said, amusement crossing his face, “what’s wrong?”

“You and I were supposed to be in detention with McGonagall ten minutes ago.”

Sirius’s eyes widened. “No. No, we weren’t. What for?”

“For the stupid _eyeballs_ —”

“Oh, great shitting balls of fire. Yes. Remus, guess I’ll see you later.”

Remus nodded. He stared abstractedly at the portrait hole for a long moment after his friends had hurried out, then assessed the state of his trousers before casting aside the blanket and heading upstairs.

He pulled the curtains round his four-poster and lay on his back in the half-dark.

At first he just shut his eyes and let himself hover. Let the world dissolve at the edges. All the details, the specifics of his day, the taste of his breakfast, the texture of the blanket, the sound and cadence of his friends’ voices, went fuzzy, then slipped away. In their place came shapes in the darkness, images: a village green. A hut, a thatched roof, cows in the hay. A girl—a young woman. Fingers twisting in her dress.

_They said I have the evil eye._

Her friend, turned away, staring out the window. _Ignore them._ Fierce, low.

_I can’t. Mrs.—Goody Smith said she was going to tell the preacher. She said I killed her cows._

_Her cows died because she’s too skint to feed them properly._

The friend was a witch. A real witch, Remus decided. But the young woman didn’t know that. Couldn’t know that.

_But the preacher—if he comes, he’ll—_

No. Not quite.

_The preacher came yesterday. Said Goody Smith sent him._

The friend turned sharply to face her. _And?_

_He just—looked at me._ The woman was flushing. _He made me—stand still and—_

_And?_

_Just looked._

Remus breathed. He shifted his legs, feeling blood pulsing slowly downward. He pushed himself under the covers, letting them rest heavy on top of him.

_Let_ me _look at you._

The woman hesitated, heart in her throat. Finally she nodded. The witch moved to her and stood close, too close. She placed her hand on her friend’s face.

Gently, gently.

_No,_ she said. _No evil here._

But Remus wanted—

He thought about the stocks again. About wrists trapped by the unyielding wood. The back bent awkwardly—rear end sticking out at an uncomfortable angle. The need to hold up the neck so as not to choke.

His prick was rising. He felt on the edge of something, awash in possibility.

The woman, burning with shame, eyes closed against the gazes of the villagers. Remus sort of…slipped into her. He held his wrists still, by his sides, imagining them trapped. He imagined cracking open his eyelids to see his friend there, watching, her face wound tight, closed-off, intent.

And afterwards, the friend in his cottage, rubbing his chafed wrists with something cool and soothing. A poultice, with real magical properties, though Remus-as-the-woman didn’t know that. Something passing between them, a sharp twist in the air.

His awareness of the dormitory, of Gryffindor Tower, was all but gone. Remus was floating somewhere, in a world of possibility, of narrative pathways, of spreading sensations. His prick was hard between his legs and his body felt loose. Open, sensual, protected by the blanket and the soft darkness of the pulled-tight curtains, Remus drifted.

 

**July 23, 1978**

“It’s okay, it’s—”

“Shit.”

“No, it’s fine, I just—” Red-faced with exertion, Remus sank to his knees. He breathed for a moment, then looked unhappily at Sirius.

“Sorry.”

Sirius ran a hand over his sweaty forehead and sighed. “You don’t have to keep apologizing.”

Self-conscious, Remus rubbed his palms against his naked thighs. His stupidly soft prick nestled between his legs. He wanted, badly, to cover it up.

Sirius was hard, even now. Remus could see how keyed up he was, had been for a long time, by the sheen in his eyes and the way he couldn’t quite stop moving his legs.

“Just let me get you off,” Remus said, not for the first time.

“I don’t want you to get me off. I want to get you off.”

“Honestly, I don’t _mind._ ”

Sirius gave him a stubborn glare. “Well, I do.”

Remus moved his legs so he wasn’t straddling Sirius anymore and pulled them tight to his chest. “We don’t always have to get exactly the same thing out of it every time we have sex.”

“Yeah, I know. But this is the third time in the last two weeks—”

“I’m _sorry_ , I know—”

“Stop apologizing!”

They glared at each other. Guilt was rising hot in Remus’ throat. What the fuck was wrong with him?

“Don’t you want to come?” Sirius asked, softer now.

After a moment, Remus nodded.

“It wasn’t like this at first,” Sirius said. “It wasn’t like this at Hogwarts. Was it?”

“No.” The dozen or so times they’d done this at school, in the months before graduation, Remus had been half out of his mind with the excitement of finally touching Sirius like that, finally touching _someone_ like that. Their encounters had been quick and furtive, snatched moments alone in the dorm and the bathroom, Sirius’ hand down Remus’ trousers and his breath hot on his cheek. And one time, in the claustrophobic darkness of a supply cupboard, a spit-slicked finger two knuckles deep in Remus’ arse.

Now, in the bright sunlight of their flat, they had all the time and space in the world, and Remus, more often than not these days, found himself struggling.

“Maybe if you…” He breathed. “Sorry. But. Maybe if you got on top for a bit…”

“Yeah,” said Sirius immediately. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“If you’d rather not—”

“Shut up and let me over.”

Something about the way Sirius phrased it, or the impatient note in his voice, made Remus’ heartbeat skip. The faint spark of arousal made him hopeful and he scrambled clumsily aside so they could rearrange themselves. Flat on his back, Sirius straddling him, his dark hair hanging down around his face and his knees pressed against Remus’ legs, Remus felt a little bit better. Sirius ran a hand down his chest, palm damp and just on the wrong side of too gentle. Remus breathed as Sirius bent to mouth at his nipple. Instead of the jolt of pleasure he wanted to feel his body responded with a faint flutter of interest, there and then gone. He tried to focus on Sirius’ wet mouth, the slide of his tongue. To empty his mind of everything else.

But then it just felt like something damp against his skin.

_He’s sucking your tits_ , Remus thought, a little desperately. _Imagine how you look right now. Under him…_

He conjured up an image of them in this moment, himself red-faced and helpless, Sirius bent over him like a bird of prey. _He’s sucking your tits,_ Remus told himself again, and gasped.

Sirius made a noise against his skin and sucked harder. Remus held the image in his head, trying not to let it slip away. If he sort of—shook it—till it crystallized, till it settled into the right angle—two men, stripped to the skin and flushed with need—one writhing beneath the other—he felt a rush of blood straight between his legs. He writhed, because of how it would look, and his breath caught in his throat.

Sirius moved lower, lapping at his belly, and Remus swallowed hard. He stayed flat on his back, hands at his sides. He wanted—he had the impulse to put his hands in Sirius’ hair, but he held himself back, and in the holding back he felt his temperature rise. He imagined Sirius had told him to be still. That he wasn’t allowed to move. _Oh, God._ A rush of arousal moved through him as he pushed his arse back against the bed, wanting to do more.

He could feel Sirius grin against his stomach. “That’s it, Moony,” he murmured, voice hoarse. “Let yourself go.”

_Let yourself go._ The words broke in on Remus’ haze and he tensed, guilt congealing suddenly in his gut. Sirius hadn’t told him not to move. Sirius wanted him to move. Of course he did—he wanted Remus to _participate_ , like a normal human being. Instead Remus was wandering away, getting off on what was in his own head.

Sirius nosed at the patch of rough hair at the V of his legs and Remus pulled his legs up so they bracketed Sirius’ head, instead of lying flat and useless against the mattress. He touched the back of Sirius’ head, scraping his fingers against his scalp.

“Yeah,” Sirius said. “Yes, yeah,” and he licked up the length of Remus’ half-hard cock.

Remus’ head fell backward against the pillow. Okay. Yes. This was good. Sirius licked him again, lapping at the tip, and Remus let out a noise embarrassingly close to a whine. The pressure of Sirius’ tongue was not enough, light, infuriatingly delicate. Remus panted with need.

Without warning, Sirius slid his mouth down around Remus’ cock and sucked. The sudden contrast sent a jagged bolt of pleasure through Remus, all the way through the arches of his feet. Sirius moaned around him, and Remus could feel the vibrations on his skin. Sirius sucked hard and fast, head bobbing, limbs going loose in long fluid motions.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Sirius said, and pulled his mouth off Remus, spit dangling from the edge of his lips. He surged up over Remus’ body, pressing their cocks together. “Fuck fuck fuck.” The friction and the slickness of spit and precome sparked through Remus, and he breathed hard as Sirius rubbed himself against him. This was how Sirius fucked: with abandon, with his whole body. He was a whirlwind—a weather event—a hurricane of sweat and restless hands and keen-edged _need_ , ceaseless, roving, wild.

Remus let himself go under. He lay back and let the storm build. He wanted Sirius to hold his wrists—wanted to be bowled over by the rush of wind—

“Come on, Moony,” Sirius panted. “You can do it. Just let yourself go.”

Anxiety and frustration crested sudden and sharp in his stomach. “I—I—”

“You can,” Sirius urged. “Grab me. Come on.”

With a sinking sensation Remus raised his hands to Sirius’ back and held him.

“Yeah.” Sirius kept thrusting, pushing down against Remus’ crotch in fast imprecise circles. “That’s it. Fuck me.”

Oh, _shit._ “Say that again,” Remus panted.

“Fuck me. Fuck me, Remus.” Sirius dropped his head and kissed Remus’ neck, chin, earlobe. “Want you to fuck me.”

“I—” Remus’ hands moved helplessly across Sirius’ back. It wasn’t _enough_. Or it was too much, or—he tried to readjust, to shift his legs to a better position, but…

He was softening again. Shame flared up hot inside him. _Think of Sirius_ , he implored himself. _You can feel his cock against you. His mouth on your neck. Just_ feel _them._ But they felt like sweat, like cooling spit. “Maybe,” he managed to make himself say, “maybe—if—”

“Goddamit, Remus,” Sirius gasped out, “just _stop thinking._ ”

Unasked for and unwelcome, tears sprang to the corners of Remus’ eyes. He went limp and Sirius rolled off him, panting, fingers clenching in obvious frustration.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said after a minute, face turned away.

“It’s okay.”

Remus watched the muscles move in Sirius’ back as he shifted, but didn’t turn to face him. “Do you,” Sirius began. “Do you—not want—?”

“No!” Remus startled himself with the vehemence of his own interjection. Almost frightened by the end of the sentence Sirius didn’t get a chance to finish, he put his fingers on Sirius’ arm. “I _do_ want to.”

“Because if you don’t—” Sirius pressed, “if you don’t want to have sex—”

“I want to have sex. I _do_.”

Sirius let out a breath, then rolled over. “Then what’s happening here?”

Miserably, Remus shook his head. He felt words jostling in his mouth, trapped between his teeth, but he wasn’t sure they were the right ones and he didn’t know how to say the things he was feeling in a way that didn’t sound like he meant that Sirius wasn’t enough.

“It’s just,” he said, voice barely audible and breaking on the second word, “I think…”

A long silence. “Yeah?” Sirius asked, waiting.

Remus made a noise. Kind of a hum. Not quite willing to turn it into speech, he fell silent again.

“What do you _want_?”

The frustration was palpable in Sirius’ voice. Remus swallowed. He wanted…he wanted to be held down and told not to move. Or…he wanted to…to be teased. He wanted it to be drawn out. He wanted not to have to taste drying spit on Sirius’ mouth or feel his legs weak and tired from so much movement or smell himself on Sirius’ breath. He wanted that feeling when he masturbated, close, warm, floating free from the world.

He wanted to get off, still, even now.

“Maybe we could just—lie next to each other and—and—just for right now, I mean.”

“What?”

“You know. Do it ourselves.”

Sirius rubbed his palms against his knees and sighed. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

“No, I—I want to.”

Skeptical, Sirius looked at him. “Really?”

“Yeah. I. Yeah. But if you don’t—”

“Fine,” Sirius said. “I mean, yeah. Okay.”

Remus nodded. After an awkward moment he rolled himself onto his stomach and breathed out. Cheeks going pink, he slid his hand down between his legs.

Sirius bit his lip and then, as if making a decision, spread himself out on his back, legs wide, and ran his palm down his chest.

Remus watched. Through half-lidded eyes he watched Sirius’ hand move over his cock and in a sort of circuit of arousal he felt his own cock jerk in response. He gripped himself and, lying still, let the sounds Sirius was making wash over him. Sirius panted and moaned, bracing his back against the bed, flinging his free arm up over his head, then letting it rove across his body, fingering his nipples, teasing over his mouth, snaking it around himself to touch his balls. Remus felt heady with arousal at the display. He kept himself quiet as always, instinctively, and drank in the noises escaping Sirius’ throat.

“ _Ah._ ” He let out a single gasp, more to alert Sirius of what was happening than anything, and his orgasm rushed through him. He stroked himself through it and pushed down against the bed and Sirius tipped his head to watch, eyes wide.

It took Sirius longer than Remus and once Remus had recovered his breath he reached out tentatively and stroked Sirius’ chest.

“Kiss me,” Sirius gritted out finally, as he bucked and writhed, and Remus brought his head down and sank deep into a kiss.

Sirius’ come splattered everywhere, drops falling hot on Remus’ hip. Remus pulled back just a little and ran a hand over Sirius’ hair. He felt warm and dazed. But Sirius’ eyes grew wary as they looked at each other.

“I’m sorry,” Remus said, shamefaced. “I’m trying.”

Sirius rubbed his clean hand across his forehead. “I just…you’re not really supposed to have to try.”

Remus shut his eyes tight. He pushed down the embarrassment that Sirius’ words had sparked. “I think…” he began. “I know what you mean. But I think maybe…that’s how it is for me.”

Sirius was quiet for so long that Remus finally had to open his eyes in dread to see the look on his face. But Sirius was gazing at him with a strange, naked expression.

“Do you mean,” he said slowly, “that it’s not me that’s the problem?”

“Oh my god,” Remus said, the bottom falling out of his stomach. “Oh my god. No. _No._ You—I—it’s me. It’s something—the way I—I’m still trying to figure out what, what exactly I—I want, and—you’re. You’re still…”

“I’m still…?”

“Still stupidly hot.”

Sirius’ mouth curled up but he didn’t quite smile.

“I think about you all the time. When we’re out, at the pub, or—or just sitting here, doing things—when you come in with your dumb motorcycle jacket and oil all over your fingers—”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Your fingers are—good. And your mouth, I can’t stop staring at it—and—and stop looking at me like that, now you’re just fishing for compliments, your ego’s big enough as it is—”

“Remus,” Sirius said, and halted his increasingly manic babbling with a brief press of a kiss. Remus scrabbled at his shoulders and kept him there, lips together, and tried to pour into Sirius’ mouth the truth of his words.

“Please don’t give up on me,” he said, resting his forehead against Sirius’ temple and closing his eyes.

“Okay,” said Sirius. “Okay. We’ll figure this out, all right?”

Remus nodded, relief flooding through him. “All right.”

“All right,” Sirius murmured, and stroked his hair.

 

**November 17, 1992**

Remus clasped his left wrist gently in his right hand. He stroked the blue veins, his thumb tracing them lightly, then raised his wrist to his mouth and kissed it: quick, soft, lingering just a little.

The small flames he’d conjured in a tall glass flickered gold over his parchment, his books, his skin; light and shadow, the close circle of warmth receding into darkness, edges blurring. Remus breathed, eyes closing, laying both hands flat on the surface of the desk. He loosed something in his mind—unmooring, unlatching—and, pressing the rest of the world to the corners, let himself drift.

_That’s it,_ he thought, _that’s good, you’re doing so well…_

Breathing out through his nose. Long and slow.

Soft and close.

He opened his eyes. He took up his quill, running his finger over the tip. He dipped it in the inkwell.

Black ink, pooling: collecting: and spreading out like ink, the sensation of—of things past—things _elsewhere_ …

The monklike silence of scholars, quills scratching on parchment. Ascetics in their cells, praying. Grey stones; old magic. Remus felt their echoes in his bones.

They were there, in the gathering darkness, in the flicker of the flames. In the vast purple night stretching outside the window, stars spraying out over the forest, the lake, the ancient castle entrenched like a fortress in its mountain home; and here, inside, Remus, solemn, grave, _still_.

He opened his book. As he flipped through the pages, lingering over illustrations of herbs and fungi, tinctures, compounds, cauldrons steaming, he felt calm, steady, even-keeled. He took notes of things he thought his sixth-years should know: the uses of sage in protection spells, the efficacy of garlic when confronting vampires. And then, there: a fifteen-year-old scrawl in the margins of a potions recipe, an arrow pointing to the sixth ingredient, “One (1) bezoar,” and, in Sirius’ messy scribble, “ _stone taken from the stomach of Snivellus Snape_ ”—and like a crack of lightning through the sky Remus was split, the small shadowed room in his head illuminated with sound and color—Sirius’ laugh, the electric green of the roiling potion, the frantic drumbeat of Remus’ teenaged heart—

Remus turned the page, and squeezed his eyes shut, and _breathed_.

Slowly, slowly, he dissolved the image of Sirius’ bright eyes and wicked grin, melting it into the quiet of the night. He brought his hand to his cheek and rubbed it gently, thumb along his jawline.

_Hush_ , he told himself, _hush; it’s all right._

He began to write, slow, steady, and as the scratch of the quill sounded in his muscles and his blood Remus pulled the night around him like a cloak and held himself there, safe and warm.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Emily Dickinson: "I dwell in Possibility - / A fairer House than Prose - "


	4. The demons are fought by language

**June 8, 1998**

If Sirius were here, with Remus, in this cold chamber with the whispers and the fluttering veil, he would tell him what to do.

_Get the fuck out of here_ , he would say, furious, pushing Remus away from the lure of what was surely only the tiniest chance that through the veil he would find something other than emptiness.

His hands tight around Remus’ wrists. Holding him back.

_Stop imagining things. There’s nothing there._

A sharp spike of longing cuts through Remus, an axe in his chest, a puncture in his lungs. Sirius’ eyes, looking at him like _that_ , so sure. His voice, steel-edged in the gentlest possible way, telling Remus to do the things that Remus was too frozen to do on his own, the things Remus wanted so badly to be told to do.

His stomach is churning with fear and his hands are clenched tight behind him, as if he is holding himself back. And yet there is a part of him that wonders, as he gazes at the fluttering curtain and strains his eyes to see beyond it, if Sirius’ voice echoed through the chamber right now, loud, certain, a dare and a promise—this part of him wonders if it would say, not _Get out_ , but _Come in._

 

**August 1, 1978**

_Dear Sirius,_

_I know it’s a bit daft to write you a letter when we live together, but I’m not quite sure what else to do and I think this will help._

_I don’t know how to say what I want. About. You know. About sex._

_I’m sorry it’s been so difficult. I just wanted to say again that it isn’t you. I love you. And I want you. I do. I just…_

_I was hoping you’d—Merlin, this is hard to write. I’m a little bit embarrassed. I probably shouldn’t be. I don’t know. Please don’t think I—I don’t know. Okay. Sorry. This is stupid._

_What if you held me down? Could we try that? Maybe me on my stomach, and your weight on top of me, and you holding my wrists or hands or something. I mean, pushing them against the bed. I think I would like that. I, you know, think about it. Kind of a lot. So._

_But if that makes you uncomfortable, if it isn’t something you want to do, I totally understand. And if it seems weird that I want it—I’m sorry. I just sort of like the idea of you—I don’t know. Getting to—or wanting to—have me, I guess. I don’t know how to say it._

_Anyway. Sorry. I love you. Please don’t be angry._

_Love,_

_Remus_

 

**August 3, 1978**

_Dear Sirius,_

_Another letter—still daft, I know. But the last one seemed to work, so…_

_Thank you for yesterday. I know it was a bit awkward. I guess bodies don’t always work like they do in one’s imagination. I wish my legs were stronger. But I liked it. I suppose you already know that. I’ve been thinking and I guess I don’t quite know if you liked it too or if it was just good to, you know, not have any trouble about my getting off for once._

_I’ve been thinking about that too. I think if you told me to come, I would. I mean, I know you’ve been sort of suggesting things, sometimes, when it’s not working, but that’s not really what I mean. Not suggesting. More like—ordering. Just—if it’s not working—maybe if you just said, something like…oh, god. Okay. If you said something like: You’ll come whether you want to or not._

_I always_ do _want to. Just to be clear._

_You don’t talk much during, usually, except when things are going badly. I’ve been wondering if that’s because you don’t want to sort of break the mood. Or if talking is too much like thinking, and you just want to forget everything, and shut up and just…you know. So if talking is bad, we don’t have to. I think I could do that, too. Maybe if you said, right at the start: Don’t talk._

_Is that too weird? Shit. Sirius, I…I don’t know. Thank you._

_Love,_

_Moony_

 

**August 9, 1978**

_Dear Sirius,_

_I’m writing because it’s hard, I guess, to say some of these things aloud. Thank you for talking to me about them. It’s hard to explain why I want some of these things and harder still to say the things I want. You asked if I wanted you to hurt me._

~~_I think_ ~~

_Yes. The answer is yes._

_How much and what kind, I’m not sure. Maybe just your teeth in my skin and your fingers tugging my hair. Maybe more._

_No blood. I get enough of that at the full._

_When I feel that sort of sharp pain—or, at least, when I fantasize about it, this is how it seems to me—it grounds me. It focuses me. The thing is that, so, this sounds ridiculous or bad but I have a hard time with the stuff about sex that’s, I don’t know, messy and uncomfortable. Sweat. The smells. The way spit and…other things taste. My arms get weak and I get out of breath and I just…_

_This is totally ridiculous, but now that I’m writing, I think actually what it is is that I don’t like to be reminded during sex that I have a body._

_I know that’s the opposite, just exactly, of how you (and most people) think of sex. Or don’t think of it. Experience it. And obviously it’s bodily sensations that I want during sex, so…but the mundane, annoying stuff, hair in my mouth, the way a touch can feel good one moment and tip over into irritating the next…_

_And fingernails in my side or, or maybe more, would help distract from all that other stuff._

_It might also…fuck. Never mind._

_It can’t be that odd to want to be spanked, right? That’s, like, a normal thing. And also I feel like you’d like it. Wouldn’t you? At the very least I’d think you’d enjoy me wanting to be spanked. Surely roughing me up a bit is something you’ve wanted for a long time, one way or another. You with your black leather jacket and motorbike and me with my mothball sweaters—put me over your knee and—anyway._

_Maybe? Yeah?_

_Love,_

_Remus_

 

**August 22, 1978**

_Dear Sirius,_

_The thing I was going to say in my last letter about hurting me. I’ve had a couple drinks with Lily and since you’re gone for the night and I’m here alone in the flat and slightly tipsy I am going to say what I didn’t say before._

_It’s also a punishment. The hurting me. For me being bad at sex. I want you to hit me for it. Slap me. Pinch me. I want. It’s a punishment for me getting the way I get. Like wanting to jump out of my skin. For wanting to not be a body. I want red scratches from you down alongside the scars on my chest. Telling me I’m nothing special. Just skin and flesh._

_I want you to make me feel bad for it. “You can’t come? You little shit, I’ll make you come. Make you remember what you are. Pin you down so you can’t escape. You think you can get away? You think you can think so hard you get away? You can’t get away from me. I won’t let you.”_

_Because the thing is if you did that and said that I would come so hard I would black out._

_It sounds so bad but it isn’t bad. It isn’t bad._

_Love, remus_

 

**August 24, 1978**

_Hi Sirius._

_I’m sorry._

_I know I freaked you out._

_I know you don’t want to talk about it._

_I wish I had written a better letter. That I had explained myself better._

_I love you. Is the first thing. And the last. And I don’t want you to think I am using you to hurt myself. I know that’s what it sounded like when I wrote it. But that’s not quite what it is._

_I said it isn’t bad and I…actually believe that. I’ve felt better since writing all that, and I know that sounds horrible because you’re upset. But let me explain._

_I think sex doesn’t work the same way for me as other people. I know I’ve said this before, more or less. I like thinking. I get turned on by thinking. Or by…some sort of…dynamic? I’m not sure exactly. But when I ask you to hold me down or tell me what to do or, yes, to hurt me, I think it’s less about getting pushed around than it is about framing sex as a sort of…scenario. I mean, that scenario IS me getting pushed around. But it’s…it’s like…this mediation between me and my body. A way to figure out how to relate to having a body. That wants things, and hurts, and gets finicky and difficult, and does things I don’t want it to._

_I’m nervous about writing this down, and we should probably burn this letter later, but, the werewolf thing. Even without all the prejudice and disapproval and stuff, all the things that make me ashamed of myself even though I know (I KNOW, okay) I shouldn’t be, it would still be really hard. It would still hurt. And I do feel ashamed, sometimes. That I can’t control myself. My body. I know I shouldn’t but I do. And that shame just feels bad. It feels awful, the more so because I know I shouldn’t feel it. Plus the fear about hurting people—the fear of the way I lose myself so fucking completely every month. Just—my body, the wolf body, and what it wants. Nowhere to escape. No words. No language. No thoughts to escape into._

_I don’t know, I think sex would be weird for me anyway. But what I know is that I, er, really fucking like masturbating. And I really like when you overwhelm me. And I think it’s got something to do with the way thinking turns me on. The way it sort of…takes all my shit about the wolf, about my body, and…makes it…good._

_That’s what I meant, I think, when I said I wanted you to punish me. Take all my shame and guilt and fear and my fucked-up relationship to my body and, well. Turn it into pleasure._

_And into love? Can I say that? Is it possible to imagine you hitting me with love pouring through every vein in your body? Can a bruise be tender? Could you believe something like that?_

_Or is that too much to ask—for you, who are I think all body, all fire, all impulse and the good thing for you about sex is that your brain goes away._

_I think the thing is this: we don’t have to want the same things or experience sex the same way. We just have to figure out if our differences are compatible._

_I think I’m ready to say some of this stuff aloud. I know you don’t love talking about sex. (I don’t agree with you, though, that it shouldn’t need talking about.) If we make it through the bad feelings and into clearer waters, though, if we start figuring out what that compatibility might look like, I’ll probably get a massive erection, so, there’s that to look forward to, anyway._

_Sorry. Trying to lighten the mood. When you’re ready to talk, just let me know._

_Yours,_

_Moony_

 

**September 20, 1978**

_Dear Padfoot,_

_You complained that I hadn’t written you a letter in awhile, and you complained that in my letters before I kept cutting myself off before it “got really good,” so, here you go._

_Me, on our sofa, lying on my back, hands at my sides, eyes closed, thinking about sex. Cock hard in my jeans—has been for ages. (I do this sometimes, you know, when you’re out.) Not letting myself touch, yet. But soon._

_You burst through the door—loud, smelling of motor oil, helmet under one arm, shaking rain out of your long hair like a dog. Big boots. All in black._

_And you see me. I’m caught. I sit up, trying to cover my erection, but you see._

_You tell me to stand up. You tell me to look you in the eyes. Then your eyes roam over my body, predatory, slow._

_You tell me to take off my clothes. I squirm. You tell me again. I do it. Finally I’m naked, flushed, embarrassed, standing in our living room with my cock jutting out and your eyes all over me._

_You’re still wearing your big leather jacket, damp with rain, and you unzip your trousers and pull out your cock and run your fingers over it slowly as you look at me._

_You tell me to look at you, not the floor. I feel so exposed. Raw. It’s not a good feeling but I want it. I’m so hard my cock is leaking a little._

_You tell me to kneel._

_Slowly, I sink to my knees. The carpet is rough. You’re still stroking yourself into hardness. Like it’s casual for you. Like you have all the time in the world._

_You tell me to put my hands flat on the floor. Tell me to arch my back._

_Tell me to crawl towards you, Sirius. Tell me to crawl. Tell me to rest on my haunches with my face inches from your cock. Tell me not to touch it. Tell me to open my mouth. Tell me not to lean forward. Tell me to take it as you shoot your come over my lips, my tongue, dripping down my chin._

_I, er. Don’t know where to go from here._

_Well. There’s that. I wish you were here right now, because…ha._

_Love,_

_Remus_

 

**November 3, 1978**

_Hi Sirius! You’re away for the weekend and I’m very sexually frustrated and I thought that you might like to know. And that I would certainly like to tell you._

_I’ve been thinking about a lot of things and obviously one of those things is you eating me out in the bathroom of that bar the other night. Fuck, just writing that down…You should know that I’m naked. I took off my pyjamas this morning to shower and haven’t put on any clothes since. It’s 2 in the afternoon._

_I can’t fucking handle it when you get like that, a couple beers in and handsy as anything, sitting across the booth from you with your fingers sliding up my knees. (I’m afraid one of these days you’ll drink too much and accidentally put your hand on Peter’s cock or, god forbid, up Lily’s skirt.) It really is like something out of one of my fantasies and I continue to be thrilled by the fact that it’s also something out of yours. (I know sometimes I get worried someone will notice and push your hand back…but I’m pretty sure you enjoy the challenge. And you always do convince me.) And you just talk right through it, bantering with James at a mile a minute while you’re gripping me through my trousers or rubbing the inside of my thigh. And there’s me, choked and flushed and pretending to be drunker than I am to account for it._

_I admit I was worried that someone would know what we were up to in that little single bathroom, even though you spelled the door locked and cast a Silencing Charm. But then your hands were on my arse and you were shoving me up against the wall and you clearly couldn’t have given a fuck about anybody else in the world. And on your knees, wrestling my pants down around my ankles, and parting my cheeks and shoving your tongue right against my hole._

Fuck _me, Sirius, I’m dripping. And I haven’t put my hands on my cock all day._

_I used to do something like this at Hogwarts, you know—not quite so intense, of course. I just used to go up to Gryffindor Tower and pull the bedcurtains around me and think about sex. It’s funny, now, to imagine myself then—I’d never have thought a few years later I’d be writing it all down. I was nervous and needy and…and I didn’t masturbate till I was sixteen, did you know that? I used to get erections and just lie there and fantasize. Not even about sex at first. Just kissing. And before I figured out I wanted men I imagined straight couples. Some imaginary man pulling some imaginary woman close and sliding his big fingers along her hips._

_I know I’m kind of difficult about this stuff. I know it would be easier for you to be with someone who just did sex instinctively, like you. But when it works, shit, Sirius. All that stupid cliché stuff. Fireworks and cannons going off. Stars going nova._

_It’s so much easier still to write down what I want than to say it. I wish I could whisper all this into your ear as we fuck. I wish the word Fuck rolled right off my tongue. Wish you didn’t have to pull it out of me._

_But I also feel a bit cheered by it. By the fact that we’ve still got so far left to go, so much left to figure out. What you like, what I like, what we want, where we fit together. Because I…want to keep figuring it out. All that exploration—it’ll take months. Years. Maybe, well. A lot of years._

_I miss you. I can’t wait till you’re home._

_Love,_

_Remus_

 

**October 12, 1995**

_Dear Sirius,_

_You’re upstairs, in your father’s old study, going through all the paperwork relating to this horrible house. It’s funny to write this while we’re both at home. I always used to wait till you were out, before._

_You asked me to write you a letter. Like when we were younger. We burned them of course but I can still remember them, more or less: such a jumble I was. All that fear and all that daring, the shame and the defiance, all those desires jostling to be heard. I learned more about myself from writing those letters, I think, than I had the whole time at school._

_I wonder, if I read them now, if I would be embarrassed by my younger self. I remember them being so painfully in earnest. The thought, today, of being afraid to admit to wanting a spanking feels so very far away. As does the terror that there might be something wrong with the way I wanted sex, something that might be impossible to fit with the way you wanted sex._

_Of course we have always been uneasily matched in that respect. I suppose I wasn’t wrong to think so. But we’ve made it work, most of the time, and rather spectacularly._

_I’m not quite sure what you wanted from this letter. A lurid fantasy? A confession? A ponderous meditation on my feelings about my body?_

_I suppose there is plenty to say about that last. It has, after all, been a very long time. And in that time I have spent countless hours in my own head. I suppose I know myself more intimately than I ever have before._

_Here’s a confession, though I don’t know if it will be welcome: You’re the only person I’ve ever slept with._

_I haven’t asked, but I guess that’s probably the same for you, about me._

_I know you hate this house. I hate it too. My fantasies, these days, are more about the sky than anything else. There’s that window in the attic roof, the old glass skylight. I lie on the floor and look up through it and watch the weather move. It’s like going into a trance, almost. I stare at the clouds and it’s like I’m floating up there. Above everything. Escaping._

_Of course that’s not entirely accurate. I do think about sex. I don’t mind, though, that it comes and goes for you these days. I imagine that’s only to be expected, after Azkaban, and what being on the run did to your body. But the fact that I’ve always been able to be, well, self-sufficient in that area makes it really truly all right for me—and of course I’d be all right with it anyway._

_You’re coming back to life, though. I can feel it. When you have me in your hands, I can feel it._

_And if you wanted this letter to jumpstart something—if you want me to stop being so careful with you, to plunge right in—well. Just yesterday I got off to the thought of you sitting on my face, pushing yourself against me till, nearly delirious with desire and the lack of air, all I could taste or smell or feel or see or think was you._

_Love,_

_Remus._

 

**September 30, 1978**

_Dear Sirius,_

_You wanted to know if it’s important to me that you really_ want _to be bossy, or mean, or to hurt me. I’m not sure. I know that I don’t want you to be uncomfortable or do anything you don’t want to do, of course. And I guess I know that I want it to seem like you want those things when we’re doing them. Or, well. I want you to want me. I want you to be getting something out of it, at least some of the time. Maybe it’s okay if those things don’t always make you come. I can make you come, afterwards._

_I’m trying to think through it. If I were lying still, say, and you were biting my shoulder and sucking it till it bruised. Sort of…methodically. And if you were—if you were obviously not uncomfortable—but if you were sort of, like, clearly doing it for me…because I wanted it…and maybe I felt a little embarrassed by it being almost a favor, maybe, or…and then afterwards you could fuck my mouth or make me suck you till you came. Yes. That would be all right. I mean, it would be good._

_I also think that there might be a way for you to have the no-thinking-just-fucking sex that you want and for it to still work for me. Because if you just come at me, wanting, and put your hands all over me and tear my clothes off and be as wild and as feral as you want—that, ha. That should do it._

_Especially if you let me give in to you, instead of urging me to be wild, too. Let me be the animal who rolls over to show its belly. Let me let you fuck me._

_You have this…hunger, Sirius. You always have. Bright and sharp and—and with teeth. Open your mouth. Let yourself take and take and take._

_Take me._

_Love,_

_M._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Roland Barthes' _A Lover's Discourse._


	5. Low-glowing hunger that propels me around

**June 8, 1998**

Remus remembers being a child perched on top of the monkey bars at the playground, daring himself to jump. Only a few feet into soft sand. Yet he’d sit there for what felt like an endless stretch of time, not exactly afraid, simply—immobile. Stuck. _Go,_ he would think over and over, but every time it was as if the link between mind and body had been severed, and his body simply would not move.

He tells his feet to step forward, towards the stone archway and the restlessly fluttering veil. _Why are you here, if not to do this?_ he asks himself, _or at least to get close?_

But his body will not move.

 

**December 18, 1976**

Drafts whistled through the corridors and white flakes were accumulating on the windowsills. Remus wrapped his red-and-gold scarf, soft and worn from too many washings, around his neck, anticipation warming him right down to the tips of his fingers, despite the cold. All week he had been crafting each detail of the upcoming trip to Hogsmeade, closing his eyes against the present moment and bringing the scenes to life. Each smell, each taste, the texture of each surface and the feelings in the air—they filled him up, rich as hot cocoa.

_A cup of tea from the little shop near the village gates: steam on the frosted windows, the scent of cloves and wallpaper glue._

_The requisite hour at Zonko’s: whispered plans and calculations, bangs and shrieks of laughter, a riot of bright colors._

_Popping over on his own to Scrivenshaft’s to stare longingly at expensive stationery: gilt-edged paper, dark wood, silence in the dusty aisles._

_A quick stop at Honeydukes: the gurgle of a Fizzing Whizbee in his throat._

_And finally a butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks with the others: laughter, overheated air, the honey-sweet drink and bubbles of foam tickling his nose. Knitted hats and warming charms in boots and flecks of snow on Sirius’ eyelashes._

Remus pocketed his mittens, smiling at the noise of running feet and excited shouts from the Gryffindor Tower staircase. After a last lingering moment of looking out the diamond-paned window at the drifts of snow settling across the lawns, he hurried to catch up with James and Peter and Sirius, who had already begun making their way to the entrance hall.

“Hey, Moony,” said a voice that, all the time these days, sent a thrill of anticipation up Remus’ spine. Sirius appeared in front of Remus, grin cracking open his face.

“Merlin, Sirius,” said Remus, startled in the doorway. “I thought you were already downstairs.”

“Nipped back up to fetch you,” Sirius said, voice lowering as he stepped a breath closer to Remus. “Just had a spectacular idea.”

Remus felt a tug in his chest at the proximity of Sirius’ wicked smile and eyes bright and burning and trained on Remus: two months in. Two months of snatched kisses and fingers drawn discreetly across knuckles and breath-catching glances as they packed up after Transfiguration or reached for the marmalade at breakfast; two months in, and Remus’ pulse felt closer to the surface of his skin, his blood and breath more insistent, more audible, whenever Sirius was around.

“An idea?” he asked, trying not to look too dazzled, too deer-in-the-headlights. “Better alert Filch so he can start cleaning up now.”

“No mess,” said Sirius, shaking his head. “Just you and me and a long dark tunnel.”

Remus’ eyebrows shot up. “You want to work on the Map? Instead of going to Hogsmeade?”

“Don’t be daft,” Sirius said. He was close to Remus, closer than he stood when the others were there, but not quite touching him. Remus wanted to put his fingers on Sirius’ cheekbones, those clean sharp lines. Thought about doing it all the time now. Imagined the weight of his fingertips dragging gently across pale skin.

“We can do both,” Sirius said. “That third-floor passageway. Behind the one-eyed witch. We figure it goes to Hogsmeade, right?” He smiled, sharp white teeth. “Let’s find out.”

Remus blinked and stuttered to a stop. This new possibility poked into the skin of the golden-haze image of his perfectly, precisely planned day. It felt sharp and big and angled. Sirius wanted him to say yes. His mouth opened and then closed. “I…”

Hot tea and cobbled sidewalks. Snow dusted on gingerbread roofs. The worn patch on the floor near Remus’ favorite chair at the Three Broomsticks.

“It could be a dead end,” he said. Ashamed reluctance held him back as Sirius’ suggestion tugged at him, insistent but blurred, its image of the day vague, unclear. “It might not go to Hogsmeade at all.”

“That’s possible. A risk we’d have to take.” Sirius’ eyes glittered. And he stepped just a hair closer to Remus.

The shine in Sirius’ gaze made Remus’ stomach dip. _Fuck,_ he thought, and maybe he could just jump right into Sirius’ big dark eyes, just let go. But—butterbeer, and the warm golden light of Honeydukes spilling out from behind displays of hopping chocolate frogs and sugar-spun snowflakes. Remus hated himself a little as the words left his mouth: “Well, I just—James and Peter will wonder where we are…”

“Oh, forget them,” Sirius replied dismissively. “They don’t need us.”

He had that look on his face, the bright crooked-mouthed look that always meant excitement and usually trouble, the one that made him seem as if he were in danger of electrocuting whomever he touched, crackling energy raring to life and ready to spill from every pore. Remus always felt a little frightened when Sirius looked like that, or, not frightened, exactly, but like he was poised on the edge of the low cliff beside James’ parents’ pond, trying to gather the courage to leap off into the water. Sometimes he just stood there, stomach twisting, secure in the knowledge that if he waited long enough, Sirius would get impatient and shove him in.

Remus had been holding in his head the image of himself overwarm in the musty silence of Scrivenshaft’s claustrophobic rooms for weeks. He was tangled in it still.

But Sirius, with that look. Sirius, and Remus, just the two of them, alone in a dark passageway.

Remus let out a breath and let his daydreams dissolve. “All right.”

Sirius’ grin widened, white teeth and delight: and all at once Remus wanted to grin right back, to kiss him open-mouthed, to laugh aloud—dizzy, suddenly, with the deviation from his normal routine, nerves a cluster of Flitterby moths taking flight in his belly.

Conspirators now, the plan percolating between them, they waited till the Hogsmeade-bound crowd had left Gryffindor Tower and then hurried silently along mostly deserted corridors. Sirius clutched his scroll of note-taking parchment and Remus held the little pilfered levitating lantern they used when exploring the darker corners of the castle. Sirius whispered “ _Dissendium_ ” to the one-eyed witch. Inside the top of the passageway it was chilly and close, the door shutting behind them to leave the hovering lantern the only source of light.

Sirius’ eyes caught Remus’, his face angled and shadowed in the light of the floating lantern. Cold dusty air settled around them and for a second Remus thought—his pulse jumping—that their mouths might collide in a kiss; but then Sirius turned, eyes bright, and plunged down the passageway. Remus hurried to keep up.

They walked in silence for several minutes. The walls were narrow, dark stone that seemed to exude chill air, and the ceiling lowered gradually as they moved farther along. Remus’ breath grew quicker, too, whether from exertion or anticipation, he wasn’t quite sure. Sirius walked in front of him, the passage too small for anything but single file; Remus felt a little bereft, wanting Sirius’ gaze, his hands, his mouth. This felt like an awkward game of follow-the-leader more than an adventure or an excuse for making out. As the silence between them stretched on, Remus tried to squash emergent thoughts of James and Peter wondering where they were, or of dead ends, or missed cups of strong black tea, and, twenty minutes in, he was feeling definitely anxious and sorry he’d come. And then Sirius stopped abruptly, breath loud in the muffled quiet, and Remus nearly ran into him.

“What—”

Sirius turned, and grasped Remus by the shoulders, and kissed him hard. Remus inhaled sharply, a little noise of surprise escaping into Sirius’ mouth. Sirius’ tongue scraped against his teeth, and Remus kissed back.

Two months, and he was still learning how to do this, how to let his hands settle at Sirius’ waist, how to follow his instincts and the movement of Sirius’ lips and teeth, how to breathe and kiss at the same time. Breathing was hard because he forgot how to do it when Sirius was so close.

Two months, and Remus was in deep, unsure he knew where the surface was anymore.

Remus always imagined he could taste Sirius’ heedlessness in his mouth, his recklessness, his black spark of sharp-edged energy—felt he was drinking it in, an inebriating draught he imbibed whenever they kissed. The longer they kissed the drunker he felt, and after a long unsteady battle to keep the words down, he said, shakily, “I think,” as Sirius’ lips moved at his temple, “I think…”

“What do you think?” Sirius murmured. Fingers in his hair.

 _In, out. Use your lungs._ Sirius’ fingertips skated along the back of his neck and Remus gasped, buzzing, a live wire, Sirius the spark. Something about the reckless scrape of Sirius’ teeth, the way he moved his tongue inside Remus’ mouth, the wild mess of his hair—immediately unkempt as soon as they started kissing, every time, like chaotic magic—something about Sirius’ abandon made Remus ache, with desire, with regret, with envy.

“I think,” he made himself say, a wave of fear washing cold down his head, “I think…”

“Yes?” Sirius murmured, mouth moving against his jaw.

“I think this is more than kissing,” Remus confessed, the words falling out of his mouth in a rush of pent-up breath. “For me. I think…”

“Yes,” Sirius replied instantly, pulling his mouth a brief centimeter away from Remus’. “Oh, thank Merlin. Yes.”

Remus’ eyes opened wide, whole body flushing hot. He pulled back farther and looked at Sirius in the face, barely daring to meet his gaze. “Really?”

“I just…” Sirius, pink-cheeked, eyes bright, waved his hand, a gesture that Remus couldn’t interpret, and said, “when we do this. It _feels_ …” He waved his hand again, shook his head, grinned, and plunged back into a kiss.

Ten minutes, fifteen. Remus was flushing deeper and deeper, heat simmering under his skin, thoughts tumbling around his head, full up, overwhelmed, subsumed by _Sirius Sirius Sirius._

Finally, lips stinging, breath short, they broke apart, reluctant, smiling, a little bashful.

“Onwards?” Sirius said, rubbing his finger against Remus’ palm.

Remus nodded. “Onwards,” he said, and their eyes lingered for another moment before they broke contact and began walking, remembering clumsily how to use their arms and legs and brains.

Now as they walked on the silence felt intimate, thick with meaning. Remus kept blushing, kept curling his fingers against the rough stone walls. _More than kissing._ Sirius. A boy. Him, and a boy. Him, and Sirius.

Into the close quiet, after the tunnel had dipped further and they had to move hunched over, heads low, Sirius suddenly said, “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to go home for Christmas less.”

Remus paused very slightly and then continued walking, uncertain and a little cautious. Sirius complained loudly about his family all the time, scathing witty remarks about inbreeding and hand-woven toilet paper, but there was something in his tone, a little catch, a little glimpse of something underneath, that made this feel different. More like a confession.

“Why not?” he ventured.

Sirius was silent for a moment, the only sound their footsteps echoing down the passageway. “They’re getting worse.” His voice was subdued. “I think they’re getting worse. Or I suppose maybe I’m getting less willing to put up with it.”

Remus couldn’t help but smile a little. “Not that you’ve ever…”

“Not that I’ve ever been particularly compliant, no,” Sirius said, a ghost of a smile in his voice. Then he sighed. “It’s just…I feel like something’s going to come to a head soon. My cousin Narcissa is marrying that horrible Malfoy man and my mum is going on and on about the wedding and hinting about my ‘prospects’ and I feel like I’m going to do something really stupid at Christmas dinner the moment Lucius Malfoy makes a comment about purebloods or Slytherin or his stupid fucking mansion…”

“May I recommend a Horn-Growing Hex,” suggested Remus, putting his hand out to steady himself against the wall as the tunnel took a sharp turn.

Sirius snorted. “And they say I’m the bad influence.” But he sighed again. “I just…hate that house, you know.”

“I know.”

“And…” Sirius cast a split-second look back at Remus over his shoulder. “Well, you know. I don’t want to wait that long to…see you again.”

A bubble of warmth expanded in Remus’ stomach and burst, splashing through him, bright and startling. Pleased, embarrassed, he looked down at his hands, a flush rising to his face. “Yeah,” he said, “me too.”

For another minute or so they traveled in silence, and then Sirius stopped, putting out a hand to halt Remus in his tracks. “Look,” he whispered.

Remus tilted his head up. In front of them the wall sloped up to a wooden panel. The underside of a trapdoor.

A wave of excitement crested through Remus, so strong it was almost nausea.

“Let’s see where it goes,” Sirius said, eyes glittering, and raised his hand to push the trapdoor upwards.

A square shaft of winter light, the murmur of voices, rows of wooden shelves and brightly-patterned boxes wrapped in plastic—

“Remus,” Sirius said, delight rising in his voice, “I think we’re in the cellar of Honeydukes.”

They hoisted themselves through the trapdoor and found themselves crouched amidst a rainbow array of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, Sugar Quills, Liquorice Wands, wooden pallets, scraps of gold wrapping paper and red ribbon, towers of pinstriped candy boxes and glass jars, yellowing receipts, and a bottle of Firewhiskey half-hidden behind an outdated register. Gleeful, Sirius hurried around, examining everything, and Remus simply stood in place, eyes wide, experiencing a burgeoning sensation of euphoria, of disbelief, an unsteady swell of teetering realization that he could _do_ this, that he could abandon his dreamed-of plans and have this instead. A trapdoor into an enchanted world. _And_ he and Sirius were…more than just kissing. All at once he couldn’t move with the fear and wonder of it.

Sirius rummaged in a pile of clutter on a low desk and crowed, turning round triumphant with a sherbet-orange chalk-textured sphere in his hand. He approached Remus with it, said softly, “Our spoils,” put the Fizzing Whizbee in his mouth and kissed him.

Foam frothed and fizzled on their tongues, on Sirius’ tongue in Remus’ mouth. Sweet bursts of sugar dissolved in Remus’ throat, leaving fruity echoes he thought he would probably taste forever, and he clutched Sirius tight as the candy made their kisses spark. _Oh,_ Remus thought, _oh, oh, I can_ have _this, the trapdoor the kiss the adventure his fingernails digging into my arms his happiness his mouth…_

They were too tangled up, blood rushing in their ears, to hear the door of the cellar open. It wasn’t until a familiar voice whispered, “I reckon they’ve kept the recalled Acid Pops down here, surely they haven’t returned them yet,” that they understood what was happening, and then it was too late.

James and Peter stood there gaping, and James said, horror dawning on his face, “What the _fuck._ ”

 

**April 26, 1975**

Weak morning light. Through Remus’ fluttering-open eyelids the pale sun on the floorboards seemed sickly and salt-stained, the room rocking queasily, as if he were on the deck of a ship. His eyelashes were gummed with sleep. Something seized deep in his belly and he shut his eyes tight, holding his breath, clutching his stomach, trying for a long moment to block out the day.

But it was the night that mattered. And it was the night that had gone in some way horribly wrong. Remus’ memories of the wolf were always blurred, bright tumbling shapes and colors, but he knew that last night, for the first time since the summer holidays, he had spent the full moon alone. Even without the dim recollections of smashing himself against the walls of the Shrieking Shack, frantic and hungry for his absent pack, the bone-deep ache sinking into his body would have told him. Since the others had begun to transform with him, full moons had been not only bearable but wonderful: roaming the country lanes behind Hogsmeade and through the wooded hills, the wolf kept in check by dog and stag; but this morning his muscles screamed in protest at the way they had twisted and stretched in the wolf’s lonely consternation.

And unless Remus was in the grips of some fever-dream vision—and every atom in him wished fervently for the mercy of madness or delusion—he had caught, when he transformed, the glimpse of someone familiar striding down the passageway towards him.

Then, splitting pain: teeth: claws: bent back and arched neck: and the wolf’s brain overtook him. And Remus did not know what had happened next.

Madame Pomfrey’s hands were uncharacteristically gentle as she lifted him to his feet. Trembling, naked, he stood before her in the rundown room, rips in the wallpaper, scrapes on the floor, scratches on his skin. He couldn’t ask the question.

“No one’s hurt,” Madame Pomfrey said. “Except you, love. Let’s get you to the hospital wing.”

When they arrived half an hour later, Remus limping on what he was increasingly sure was a sprained ankle—which, under normal circumstances, Madame Pomfrey would have noticed and healed immediately—the hospital wing was cool and quiet. Clean white walls and clean white beds, regular, even, geometric, straight lines and shining metal. Remus had never seen it so empty. He wondered if all the other students had been sent away, and his already twisted stomach tied another sour knot.

“Please, what…?” Remus asked, swallowing the end of the question before it could escape.

“Professor Dumbledore will be in soon,” Madame Pomfrey told him as she lowered him to the bed. “He’ll explain. There’s been a bit of an incident, but no one’s hurt. And it wasn’t your fault,” she added sternly, and Remus rather thought she’d gone off script with that last sentence. It was kind, but Remus knew all too well that it wasn’t true. He was a werewolf. It was always his fault.

He took the potions she gave him, fingers numb, stomach churning. The headmaster coming to see him. That could only mean things were very bad.

The wait seemed interminable, but finally, Remus’ cuts still stinging and his ankle tingling as it healed, Albus Dumbledore entered the hospital wing.

“Do you remember what happened, Remus?” he asked as he sat down beside the bed, tucking his long beard to one side.

“Snape,” Remus choked out. “Did I…was Snape there?”

Dumbledore nodded, watching him closely. “Did you know he would be there, Remus?”

Remus’ body went cold. “No. _No_. I…” He struggled for words, frightened, panicked.

Something in Dumbledore seemed to relax ever so slightly, and he reached out and put a hand on Remus’ shoulder. “I believe you. Mr. Potter assured me that was the case.”

“James?” Remus still couldn’t quite breathe. “What does James have to do with it?”

Dumbledore sighed and looked for a second very old. “It seems that Mr. Black told Mr. Snape to follow you down the secret passageway last night. He told Mr. Potter, who followed. He pulled Mr. Snape out in time to prevent any harm from coming to him. But not in time, I am afraid, to stop him from seeing you transform.”

Sirius.

Sirius had…

Remus struggled to understand. He couldn’t.

“Mr. Snape has agreed to keep your secret, Remus. But I am afraid the consequences for Mr. Black will necessarily be grave.”

Through the buzzing in his head, the shock and the disbelief—surely Sirius hadn’t—how _could_ he just—surely there was more to it?—an urgent thought fought its way up to the surface of his brain.

“Don’t expel him. Please.”

Dumbledore’s blue eyes rested on Remus’ face for a long moment. Then he said, slowly, “Remus, I appreciate your loyalty, but you must understand what would have happened to you had James Potter not followed Severus Snape down the passageway—”

“It’s not loyalty,” Remus blurted. “Of course I know. I _know._ It’s just…” He took a breath, feeling dizzy. “If you expel Sirius, he’ll be trapped at home with his family. I don’t know what they’d do to him if he got expelled. But Hogwarts is the only chance he has of getting away from them for good and you can’t take that away, please don’t take that away—”

Dumbledore held up a hand. He looked very, very serious. “Mr. Lupin, I had not known the situation with the Black family was so extreme. I…” He ran a hand over his face. “I will take that into consideration. In the meantime, you must rest.”

Bone-weary as he was, Remus thought he might never rest again. After Dumbledore left he stared wide-eyed at the ceiling for a long time. He wanted to see James. He wanted to see Sirius, or maybe he never wanted to see Sirius again. He wanted Sirius to explain what had happened. Maybe if he had an explanation, he would be able to understand.

When Sirius finally snuck into the hospital wing, taking the Invisibility Cloak off his head to reveal wild eyes with dark smudges below, he gripped Remus’ forearm with one invisible hand and bent over the bed.

“Remus, I’m so sorry, Remus, please, I fucked up, I really fucked up. As soon as I saw the look on James’ face I realized, I just—I was so _angry_ —Snape was saying things about  my family, about Regulus and who he was hanging around and he said I didn’t know my own brother and I said there were things about us he didn’t know either and he _laughed_ , like he didn’t believe me, and—and I told him to—to follow you and—”

“How could you?” Remus’ voice was hoarse, his throat constricted. “You know what would happen to me if I hurt someone.”

“I know.”

“I’d get expelled. Put in prison, maybe. Worse.”

“I know.”

“And—and you must know what that would do to me, if I—if I ever hurt someone—”

“I _know_.” Sirius hung his head. His hair was mussed, like he’d been pulling at it all night. His eyes were bloodshot. “I’m sorry.”

“But…” Remus struggled to find the right question, treading water, struggling for air. “But if you knew all that, then how could you do it?”

Sirius shrugged, helpless. “I just wasn’t thinking.”

Tears rose up in Remus’ eyes, threatening to gush over. “But. But how,” he swallowed, “how could you _not_ think about all of that? How…” He looked away, pressing his lips together tightly.

Sirius gripped the blanket. “Don’t things ever just…come out of your mouth without your permission?” he asked a little desperately. “Don’t you ever just…say things?”

“No,” Remus said, and dashed the tears from his cheeks, “no, I don’t.”

Sirius let out a sort of half sob. “I know,” he said, burying his face in his hands. “I know you don’t. I wish—fuck, I wish I were more like you.”

A shudder ran up Remus’ spine, so hard he felt himself shake. Shock and nausea swam together in his belly. He shut his eyes tight.

“You’d never do something so stupid,” Sirius said through his hands. “You can always picture what’s going to happen when you do things, you always think about how it will affect people, and I don’t, I _can’t_ , it’s like I’m hexed, I just have these—these impulses and—and I just—I’m so sorry, Remus, sometimes my head just goes red and—and _blank_ —”

“Please leave me alone now.” Remus’ voice was small and choked.

“Remus—please, I—”

“Please, Sirius,” Remus said quietly, still crying. “I need some time alone.”

 

**June 11, 1994**

Remus landed in the early hours of the morning in a fog so thick it was more or less rain. His warming charms had worn off somewhere over the Irish Sea and he shivered as he touched his broom down on wet green grass. Too dangerous to follow Sirius by Apparition or Portkey—too traceable—and this small uninhabited island had no fireplaces, let alone the Floo Network. Remus had followed the silvery thread of Dumbledore’s tracking charm, visible only to him, north and west from Hogwarts. Now, damp with salt spray and mist, chilled to the bone, he trekked over the slippery headland and down under a rocky overhang, where Sirius and Buckbeak were taking shelter from the weather.

When Remus had set out the day before, still battered and sore from his first full moon without Wolfsbane in nearly a year, his head had been filled with an overwhelming cacophony of thoughts and feelings, worries, memories, one popping up after the other as his world unraveled and stitched itself back together. Sirius’ suspicious questions those last few weeks before Voldemort’s downfall, finally understood. Peter aged twelve, caught stealing sweets from James’ bag. Remus, on hands and knees, heaving, after seeing a mention of Sirius’ escape in the _Daily Prophet._ Harry’s face upon learning the truth about his parents’ deaths. And where would Sirius go now? Where would Remus? Were they angry with each other? Did they know each other, after all this time? How much, after Azkaban, did Sirius still remember?

But then—then he saw Sirius again.

Emaciated, hair dank, face dirty, teeth yellow: and still it was Sirius. Eyes more sunken and more vacant than he remembered: and still it was Sirius. Older and thinner and sadder and more unsure: and still it was Sirius.

Remus lurched towards him, legs trembling. Sirius reached out his arms as Remus fell into them and then just fell, slowly, ungracefully, taking them both down stumbling onto the damp grey rock.

“It’s you,” Remus said, and could not seem to stop saying, “it’s you, it’s you, it’s you.”

“Remus,” Sirius said hoarsely, just once, and they clutched at each other’s sleeves, elbows, shoulders, holding tight and trembling.

“It’s you,” Remus sobbed, unable to see through his tears, “it was always you. I thought—I thought I’d never really known you—”

“Hush,” Sirius said, gripping the back of his neck tightly.

“I’m so sorry I believed it,” Remus said, crying, “please forgive me—”

“Shhhh. Remus.”

“What’s going to happen to you now—you have to go away, much farther than this, you’re not safe—”

“Shut up,” Sirius gasped. He took Remus’ face roughly in his hands and kissed him hard on the mouth. It was more bite and more declaration than kiss. Teeth and the hard bone of his jaw knocking against Remus’.

Remus fell back, sank under Sirius’ touch like when they were young, and Sirius landed half on top of him, both of them digging uncomfortably into the rock, both of them wet and cold and covered in dirt, Remus near to bursting with how much this hurt, how much he felt splayed open with his guts spilling out and the bile of the last thirteen years gushing from him. A wound, lanced.

“What are we going to _do_ —” he gasped, and Sirius shut him up with a fierce bite that brought a bead of blood to his lip.

“Stop _thinking_ ,” he all but snarled. So Remus did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "Triangles of Power" by Eileen Myles.


	6. Time Passes

**June 8, 1998**

Remus stands before the veil and remembers reading Tennyson aloud to Sirius in the lantern-glow of the library, prelude to a kiss and a kind of kiss all on its own. What if Sirius were just on the other side, he thinks, watching the black fabric flutter; could he hear me, through all these whispers?

He recites, softly,

_ “I sometimes hold it half a sin _

_        To put in words the grief I feel:  _

_        For words, like Nature, half reveal  _

_    And half conceal the Soul within. _

_    But, for the unquiet heart and brain,  _

_        A use in measured language lies;  _

_        The sad mechanic exercise,  _

_    Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. _

_    In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o’er,  _

_        Like coarsest clothes against the cold;  _

_        But that large grief which these enfold  _

_    Is given outline and no more.” _

and imagines that Sirius is listening.

 

**October 31, 1981 – September 1, 1993**

Remus moved, alone, into a two-room house by the sea.

The floorboards were rotting in one corner. The roof sagged. The wind whistled through the gaps in the walls and windows. Yet it held together, somehow. Didn’t collapse during the first big squall one black night in November, and Remus took that as a sign and unpacked his bags.

There was a moldy stack of paperbacks on the built-in wooden shelf in the corner of the bedroom-slash-living-room—the shelf built and books collected by Remus’ great-uncle, an eccentric Muggle who had spent his days smoking his pipe and watching sails on the horizon. One of the books was about a house by the sea and the British family who holiday there. A big house of children and parents and friends tumble about, talking, laughing, wondering; and then about two-thirds of the way through the novel, as Remus discovered one wet night while unsticking one gummed page from another, the house is shut up and ten whole years go by in a single strange chapter called “Time Passes.” The house goes dark. The weather changes, then changes again. And here and there, squeezed inside brackets [ ] between long eloquent paragraphs about the house moving through the seasons, spare matter-of-fact language reports the life events of the family: 

[death] 

[marriage] 

[birth] 

[death] 

narrowed and shut up into small boxes, tiny rooms, murmured asides.

Remus began teaching himself to think of his own life in brackets.

[Voldemort broke into the Potters’ house, Sirius Black having betrayed them. He killed James and Lily, but the baby lived. Peter Pettigrew confronted Sirius, who killed him and a dozen Muggles and then was sent to Azkaban. A tragedy, people said, but at least the war was over.]

_ So with the lamps all put out, and the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began.  _ In the bowed house on the barren headland, Remus read the first words of “Time Passes” for the first time. And as time passed for him, the old paperbacks were pulled one by one from the shelf and left scattered across the floor, the chairs, the windowsills. They were begun, in fits and starts, during the early hours of the morning and late at night, yellowed pages and smudged print opened to weak moonlight and grey dawn. They picked up dust from spiderwebbed corners and unwashed windowsills, and creases from being thrown down in anger and in apathy, and here and there the brittle tracks of salt tears. But they were read, all of them, in the end.

[Alice and Frank Longbottom were tortured into madness by Death Eaters looking for information about Voldemort. Their young son, Harry’s age almost exactly, was sent to live with his grandmother.]

For the first year, Remus stepped outside only at night and when it rained. He did not answer his letters. He did not eat very much. His voice grew hoarse with disuse.

Then one day in the middle of the morning, a chill mist hanging over the sea and the sun half-obscured by clouds, Remus opened the front door and walked out. He stood on the headland, the smell of salt thick in the air. He squinted against the watery light, eyes unused to daytime; his pupils seized up, contracting against the sun; but slowly he let out a long breath.

“This is what living is now,” he said, and something in him seemed to concur. To settle. He gazed toward the invisible horizon for a long time, then went inside and made a cup of tea.

He drank five or six cups a day after that, strong, black, with no cream or sugar. His great-uncle’s stock of beans and oats and pickled vegetables ran low, and Remus sent an owl to a magical grocer’s in the nearest town and requested a monthly delivery of supplies.

He taught himself to make bread. He wanted to learn to move slowly. To wait. To perform the same repetitive motion over and over, to grow familiar with the texture and feel and smell of the same inert substance, to practice patience.

He learned to make two small hollows in the heap of flour, one for yeast and one for salt. To breathe in the scent of water mixing with flour and the mellow earthy scent of yeast. To knead without magic, pushing his hands through sticky-resistant dough until it gave way beneath his fingers, bouncing back slowly, resilient, tamed. To learn by touch the moment chemistry kicked in and suddenly the texture was right, the heft of it in his hands, the surface of it against his skin, and to stop before that moment passed, as it could so easily, so quickly, if he wasn’t paying attention, or if he second-guessed himself.

He learned to wait long hours for the dough to rise. Sometimes he reread his great-uncle’s books, and sometimes he spoke half-jokingly to the spiders in the corner, and sometimes he stood in the doorway of the house, gazing out to sea.

And the sour pull of pain in his stomach, the hollowness behind his eyes, the gnawing teeth of loss: he learned to sit with them, as he sat with the rising dough. He carried them around with him, heavy, sticky, familiar to the touch; he learned patience.

He ate tea and toast, now, all the time.

Storms passed over the house, rattling the windows, threatening to tumble it all to the ground. Leaks sprang in the roof, were patched, sprang again. By the third year there, Remus had grown as intimate with the bones of the house as with the sticky loaves he kneaded on the worn countertops; he knew where the wind came through to the left of his bed, whistling in the night and chilling him to the bone; how much it had to rain for each leak to open up, a downpour for the one over the sink, a spring shower for the one by the front window, and the merest drizzle for the persistent hole in the corner of the bathroom; where each floorboard creaked and shelf sagged, the squeaks and shudders the old wood made in the middle of the night. He spoke to the house, sometimes, just as he spoke to himself, without self-consciousness.

He planted potatoes the third spring he lived there, and carrots the next.

[He noted the day when Harry Potter must have started Muggle kindergarten. He sat in his corner, alone, knowing nothing of Harry’s newly broken glasses, nor the way his aunt grumbled over them and mended them with tape. And he knew nothing of Harry’s cupboard under the stairs, or of his hand-me-down clothes.]

Remus’ sense of taste returned, and his awareness of time passing. The nights and days no longer blurred together into one endless stream. He awoke one morning restless and irritable, and spent the day pacing and puttering. His body felt itchy, oversensitive, wanting to move and pick things up and change position every few minutes. It took three days of this for Remus to realize what it wanted, and another two for him to set aside the knotted twist of guilt and fear he felt to put his hand down his trousers and stroke himself tentatively, slowly, into hardness.

He took off his clothes and lay naked under the sheets, feeling the worn fabric brush against the hairs on his legs, the bony bumps of his knees and elbows, his nipples, his arse, his cock. As a teenager he had done this, lying unclothed in bed and thinking of sex, losing himself in languid honey-thick daydreams and clouds of sensation, until he was humming with arousal, legs bending and stretching of their own accord, until he was leaking, until he had to get up and shower or feel as though he might catch fire. His daydreams were more dangerous, now, threatening shocks of black hair and a crooked grin around every corner; the nearly visceral sensation of imagined fingers in his arse turning suddenly specific, turning from fantasy to memory; the voice in his head telling him to get on his knees or cross his wrists over each other or  _ look at me, Remus, look at me watching you  _ slipping into a familiar cadence that set Remus gasping, pulling his hand away from his prick as fast as it could go, leaving him winded and ill on his back, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. He tried to think instead of blonde hair or red, blue eyes, freckles, thick stubby fingers, the raspy low-pitched voices of older men, but at last he remembered the way he had felt when he’d pictured seventeenth-century witches shut up in the stocks, when he’d seen an old engraving of Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff clasped in each other’s arms, when he’d stumbled in his library searchings across a fragment of Sappho, a love letter to the moon that had for one brief moment swept Remus high above his own cruel memories of her:

_ Awed by her splendor  _

_ stars near the lovely  _

_ moon cover their own  _

_ bright faces  _

_ when she  _

_ is roundest and lights  _

_ earth with her silver _

And Remus began thinking about women: not women with him, or women with men, but women with each other, fumbling their way through the dark in Hogwarts dormitories or wrapped in each other’s hair or naked in the sea; women, taught to be gentle, learning to be sharp; sharp nails, sharp teeth in soft, soft skin.

None of these imagined women ever shifted in his head into Sirius Black.

He got on his knees on the floor one day, awkward and aroused, and pulled his pants slowly down, exposing his arse to the open air. Reluctant, ashamed, caught. His pants pooled around his ankles as he ran his thumb back down his crack to his hole. He cleared his throat and then fell silent. He felt the floorboards bite into his knees. He opened his mouth and then shut it. His cock rose. He said, hearing his own voice cut through the muted silence of the empty room, “Stay on your hands and knees and count to one hundred.”

He counted.

By sixty-five, his legs and arms were trembling. As he felt his muscles burn, he began to leak, a thick shiny drool dripping onto the floor below him.

When he reached one hundred, elbows shaking, he said, “On the floor,” and dropped his body to the ground, knees bent below him, forehead on the scratched wood. He breathed, lightheaded, dizzy and embarrassed and aroused. An idea floated into his head and he flushed hot. He couldn’t. But then again, he could. There was no one there but him.

He opened his mouth and made himself say it: “Lick the floor.”

He stuck out his tongue and, after a long moment, licked a wet stripe across the floorboards. They tasted like dust and old wood. Remus screwed up his eyes and ran his tongue along the boards again and again, body folded up, cock trapped against his stomach, hands splayed out on either side of his head. He pressed his forehead against the floor, unshed tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. 

He made himself wait a long time before he let himself come.

The thing about ordering himself around, he thought, sipping a cup of tea with shaky hands afterwards, was that he knew exactly what he wanted to be made to do.

[Remus did not know about the day Dudley Dursley pushed Harry to the ground and stole his lunch, nor of the birthday his relatives forgot to celebrate one year, too distracted by a scandal at the local grocer’s.]

He began to talk long walks. Over the headland, across the scrubby hills. He followed worn tracks and the paths of seabirds. His great-uncle’s heavy coat kept him warm on windy wet days; it smelled like cigarettes and mothballs and clean dirt. Remus thought he was probably developing a scent of his own, and possibly a reputation. The strange scarred recluse in the house on the cliff.

He met people occasionally, a sheep farmer, a traveler, a botanist. All Muggles. They nodded to Remus, or said good morning, and the botanist spoke with him for half an hour about the wild masses of sea buckthorn that grew on the sandy coast, waving silvery-green stalks and clumps of bright orange berries. They thrived in the salt winds, the botanist said. They were also called seaberry or sallowthorn. Remus liked that last name best.

People from his former life stopped writing to him eventually. He had half expected at first that someone would appear on his doorstep and drag him out of his house—either a former Death Eater or a former classmate, neither of which he wanted to see—but over time it became clear that the people he still knew were giving him space, sending letters instead. He thought perhaps the taint of three dead friends and one traitor might have been too much for them, too potentially contagious to risk an in-person intervention. He thought they might be right. He did not want to see anyone anyway.

He did not answer the letters they sent, neither Dumbledore’s enquiring if he needed help finding work nor Minerva McGonagall’s updating him on Harry’s whereabouts and then, soon after, on what had happened to Frank and Alice. Elphias Doge sent him one long letter about a year after James and Lily’s deaths, inviting him to a memorial that the surviving members of the Order were organizing to mark the anniversary. Mundungus Fletcher, who had somehow obtained his address, owled him a series of bizarre offers to participate in complicated financial schemes. Somehow these hurt as much to receive as anything else—proof, perhaps, of the world spinning on without him, despite the fact that for Remus it had narrowed to this one tiny spot, built on the wreckage that everyone else, as it turned out, was intent upon cleaning up. So the letters trickled off, slowly but surely.

It came like a sudden shock of light when an owl flew in over his vegetable garden and tapped at the window one bright afternoon. He blinked, heart jumping to his throat, as the outside world intruded with abrupt gasps of noise and color—faces and voices of people he had not seen in years. With a certain sense of dread he opened the envelope.

_ Dear Mr. Lupin, _

_ We met, once, at King’s Cross, when you and my cousin were beginning your third or fourth year at Hogwarts. I’m Andromeda Tonks. You might remember that there was a bit of a spat on the platform involving my Aunt Walburga after I spoke to her son. _

_ Her son. My cousin. I should say his name. I mean Sirius, of course, and I can’t imagine you want to hear about him any more than I do. Minerva said you don’t answer letters. I wouldn’t disturb you, but my daughter, Nymphadora, is fourteen years old and has for reasons I’m not privy to come back from Hogwarts this summer in a very odd mood and will barely speak to us at all. It’s something more, I think, than teenage angst, though I don’t know what. Last week she asked if Sirius had had any friends who she could talk to. I can’t imagine you want to do that, but I promised her I would ask, since it’s the only thing she’s said to me in days. _

_ If you don’t reply, I’ll assume you’ve done what I would in your position and chucked this letter into the fire. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Andromeda _

Remus left the letter lying open on his table for three days and then, in the middle of the night, sent a response. Andromeda and her daughter arrived on foot from the nearest village, grey clouds scudding overhead, and Andromeda left soon after. Remus did not think she wanted to be there.

Nymphadora stared into her mug of tea for a long time. Remus did not know how to be around people anymore, but he did know how to be quiet. When at last she looked up at him, dark circles under her eyes, mousy brown hair falling around her heart-shaped face, he said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

They walked along the headland, chill air coming up from the sea, salt in the wind. Nymphadora didn’t speak. Neither did Remus.

She came back all that summer, every couple of weeks. Andromeda did not accompany her after the first visit. The teenager’s fingernails were bitten and covered in chipped red paint. She wore heavy brown boots. Remus was deeply grateful that she did not look like Sirius.

They walked together, hours-long walks, and Remus showed her tidepools and plovers’ nests. He baked bread for her. Once a line of baby ducks crossed their path and she looked up, eyes bright and quick and Remus could see suddenly and for the first time that she was somebody else entirely, that her silence and perpetually furrowed brow did not come naturally to her.

“I’m supposed to be able to change myself, you know,” she said to him during a summer storm that had them trapped inside for hours, both of them flipping languidly through Remus’ great-uncle’s collection of paperbacks. “I’m a Metamorphmagus. I can change my hair any color I want, usually. But I can’t anymore.”

Remus looked at her quickly. A shape shifter, like Sirius. But neither of them said his name.

They did not speak of him until July blew into August and the sun decided all at once to bake the headland brown and blind them as they walked with light glinting off the sea. Nymphadora, who had recently asked Remus to call her Tonks, said, “Sirius was the only Black who wasn’t in Slytherin, and he still went bad.”

_ Went bad. _

“Do you think…” Tonks began with difficulty, then trailed off.

Blood will out. The only explanation that had ever really made sense, and yet Remus had never been able to swallow it. Evil running through his veins. Poison, thick and insidious. Something in Sirius that had finally bent him back to his roots, finally pulled him down into the toxic soil of his family tree, noxious swamp gas, sucking mud. But Remus could remember, from one early summer morning, the red outline of a welt on Sirius’ cheek, and that was what Black blood rising to the surface looked like, scarlet like a brand, like trauma, like a wound. He could not believe, even now, that Sirius had done what he did because of his family.

“I’m in Hufflepuff,” Tonks said.

Remus, for a second, stared at her face, pale and miserable and frightened, and did not understand what she was asking.

“Did he always seem—normal?” she asked in a rush. “Are there things now that—warning signs—things he did or said, I mean, did he—things that if, if I ever—if I—”

“You are not Sirius Black,” Remus said, and she fell silent. 

The sun beat down on them. The whole landscape seemed to resonate with Sirius’ name.

“Nothing in Sirius made him do what he did,” Remus said. “It wasn’t his family’s fault, or You-Know-Who’s, or James and Lily’s, or—anyone else’s. Sirius made a choice.” He took a breath. “All you have to do is make a better one.”

When she came to visit him for the last time before returning to Hogwarts, she had bright green hair and eyes to match, and he realized with an unexpected ache that he would miss her.

[Harry Potter got older. His hair grew wild like his father’s, and his green eyes reminded Petunia of her sister every time she looked at him. It was the reason she tried not to look at him too often.]

Remus wrote to Albus Dumbledore and asked if he knew of any work that might be done remotely. Albus wrote back with the name of a friend who worked in publishing and the friend sent Remus an extremely thick manuscript of an extremely dull textbook on magical fungi, and Remus sat at his table copyediting and drinking endless cups of tea. These days he kept the windows propped open with stout sticks he’d found on the headland, letting the sea air in, sharp and cold, until the weather changed and he had to line the cracks in the walls with rags to keep in the warmth. He made mulled wine and corrected comma splices and hummed softly to himself. He lay in bed at night and ran his fingers gently over his body and thought no one else would probably ever touch him like that again, but he was only a little sad about it, sad like the last bitter dregs of coffee, not like whirlwinds, not like gaping holes. His own hands felt so good. He knew himself so well.

_ This is what living is now,  _ he thought, and the years passed.

[Sirius Black broke out of Azkaban. No one knew where he went, but there were rumors he was after his godson, Harry Potter.]

When Albus Dumbledore showed up on Remus’ doorstep in August of 1993 with a job offer and the news that Sirius had escaped from prison, it took Remus a long, long moment to recognize him, and just the sight of his bright blue eyes sent the blood rushing from his head, dizzy, unsteady, the walls of his narrow life cracking suddenly down the seams.

In the end he went back to Hogwarts because Dumbledore showed him a photograph of Harry. His eyes were Lily’s, but, god, he looked so much like James.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tennyson, "In Memoriam." Sappho, trans. Mary Barnard. "Time Passes" is from _To The Lighthouse_ by Virginia Woolf.


	7. Something there is that doesn't love a wall

**June 8, 1998**

The veil is just a doorway, Remus thinks. He looks at the stone archway and tries to imagine that it is like any other archway, that one might step through and be  _ somewhere _ , instead of the  _ nowhere  _ he has been told lies beyond. He remembers holding Harry back, stopping him from running through after Sirius—plunging in, like his father always did, like his godfather always did—a risk, a jump into open air—and Remus’ arms tight around his chest as he screamed and kicked.  _ He’s gone _ , Remus had murmured roughly,  _ he’s gone _ , and the part of him that believes isolation to be the natural human state, the part of him that lived without human contact for years, believes,  _ knows _ , that this is true. Gone. He’s gone.

But the part of him that speaks in Sirius’ voice and trembles through him in quick restless bursts said to him then and says to him now,  _ It’s just an open doorway. _

_ Just walk through. _

 

**November 26, 1995**

_ This was easier when I was alone _ , Remus thought, and his chest seized up. What a horrible thought. Sirius was naked and flushed and _ there _ , solid, real, alive, innocent, skin, bones, hair, blood, flesh, in Remus’ bed—and Remus was wishing himself on the floor of his rotting old house, hand on his own prick.

“What—” he rolled over, “what do you want?”

Sirius gritted his teeth and shook his head, fingers tightening over Remus’ skin. His hair was in his face, blocking his eyes, and the still-too-sharp lines of his cheekbones. “It’s fine.”

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t. Remus brushed the thick black strands back behind Sirius’ ears and murmured, “Anything you want. You know you can ask for anything. Merlin knows I have—”

And Sirius bit out, suddenly, “It’s nothing like that. I just want us to roll around with each other like mindless animals till one of us manages to stick it in.”

Remus went quiet, the faint blush of more-than-a-decade-old shame and guilt creeping slowly over him. He had known at nineteen that there were things Sirius wanted that he couldn’t give. They had managed anyway—done much more than that. But shut up together in Grimmauld Place a lifetime later, Sirius miserably trapped in a body that wanted to run through moonlit woods and swerve through the sky on a roaring motorbike and Remus burrowing farther and farther down the escape hatch of his own mind, the ways in which they had never matched were flaring up again, in bed and out.

All the things he couldn’t do for Sirius. All the things Sirius couldn’t do for him.

But here they still were. After all this time.

And in the bedroom that afternoon, weak sun over the covers and rust-red paneling so dark it seemed the walls were pressing in, Remus felt his old teenaged terror of the ways they didn’t go together slip away without even a dying gasp.

He smiled at Sirius, who frowned back, confused, as Remus pressed a kiss to his temple.

“You know, there’s an easy solution to this problem,” he said, eyes bright, heart brimming all at once with the realization that what had at one time been a horrible secret shameful truth about his love for Sirius,  _ that he would never be rid of it no matter what either of them did, _ had transformed into, quite simply, just  _ truth.  _ He would never be rid of it: it would burn bright as ever up until the very last moment when his consciousness was extinguished and all went dark.

Sirius’ frown deepened. And then Remus saw on his face the moment he understood.

“Oh,” Sirius said. He looked uncertain. “Do you—you mean—?”

“Why shouldn’t we sleep with other people?” Remus asked. It seemed like such an easy thing, now he said it aloud: not catastrophic, not explosive. Just simple and so obvious it seemed they ought to have plucked it out of the air a long, long time ago.

“Because,” Sirius said. He stopped. “Because what would…what if we…?”

He looked helpless in his nakedness all of a sudden. Remus felt the reversal so strangely. He was naked, and he knew what he wanted. He could picture it so clearly.

“What if we what?” he asked.

Sirius frowned and picked at the blanket. “What if it did something to the way we are together? What if one of us got jealous or, or upset, or…I just…”  

“Do you really think it wouldn’t work?” asked Remus softly. He moved closer to Sirius, pressing their bodies gently together, knee to knee, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder.

Sirius shrugged, palms wide. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”

Remus tilted his head. Strange. “I can imagine it so perfectly,” he said. “I can picture exactly how it would go.”

“Really?” Sirius asked. He sounded doubtful, but curious, too.

Remus nodded. He laced his fingers through Sirius’ and raised Sirius’ hand to his mouth, kissing the back of it. “Yes.” He leaned back against the pillows, thinking. “Say it was you—you who’d found someone. In a bar, maybe. Somebody with—with a leather jacket like yours, maybe. Somebody really big, like, just, towering over you. And they’d have—sharp teeth. A dangerous smile.”

“You have sharp teeth,” Sirius said. His voice was almost defensive—in defense of Remus.

Remus squeezed his hand. “And they’re too dangerous to bite you with,” he said. He lowered his voice a little, murmuring into Sirius’ ear. “Not his. And he’d come onto you. Not subtle. Not shy. And you’d—you’d just—you’d look at me, sitting in the booth, folded up on myself with my whiskey and I’d—I’d smile. And I’d nod, and raise an eyebrow, like—like, you sure you can handle him? And you’d grin, that cocky infuriating grin, and you’d tell him to come out back or, or into the bathroom, and—and you’d fuck each other. Like mindless animals.”

Sirius was holding his breath. He was also holding Remus’ hand more tightly before.

“And then?” he asked unsteadily. “What then?”

“Then you’d come back and sit in the booth with me, and tell me all about it.”

There was amusement in Remus’ voice, but it was still low, and a little hoarse now.

“And that would be that,” he said. “And then we’d go home to our bed.”

Sirius stared at him, and then said, loudly, “Well,  _ fuck. _ ” A grin, delighted, lit up his face. “You’re absolutely fucking right, Remus. Merlin, you’re a bloody  _ genius _ . Why didn’t I think of that?”

“You’re not as smart as me,” Remus said loftily.

“Clearly. Nor as filthy-minded.”

“My mind is a pretty filthy place,” Remus agreed. “But—yeah.” He laughed a little. “I don’t know why we waited so long to think about this. Just now, all of a sudden, it just seemed so  _ easy. _ ”

At that, Sirius dropped Remus’ hand and let it fall, limply, onto the mattress. “But it’s not easy now,” he said, the enthusiasm draining abruptly from his voice. “Not for me.” He ran a hand wearily over his face, as if he was too tired to work up the usual frustration and anger. “Can’t really meet men when I can’t leave the house.”

An image, not particularly welcome, flashed through Remus’ head of what it might have been like if they’d reached this point back in their early twenties—gay bars, and back rooms, and him on his knees for someone who knew without instruction how to make him cry out, and Sirius in his wilder moods fucking somebody as chaotic and kinetic as himself. And then swapping stories in their bedroom at night, or over toast in the morning.

And the thought seized him:  _ can it really be too late? _

  
  


**December 3, 1980**

Harry had Sirius’ finger tight in one spit-covered fist and was babbling nonsense to him. Harry was always grabbing onto some part of Sirius—fingers, hair, nose—and chattering in baby talk as if carrying on an engaging conversation that kept getting interrupted, annoyingly, every time Sirius left. And Sirius was always chattering back, about Quidditch and his motorbike and the copious amounts of drool that bubbled from Harry’s mouth. As soon as Sirius walked into James and Lily’s house he would dive straight for Harry, tickle his stomach, and lift him into the air, pretending each time that Harry was getting so big he could hardly manage it. He changed Harry’s nappies and burped him and conjured bubbles and balls of light for him to gaze at and reach for. He was very clearly Harry’s favorite.

Remus couldn’t fathom how Sirius knew how to do all this. As he hovered in the background, watching Harry giggle at Sirius, he tried to envision what he might do to elicit the same response. He had a mental list of charms he could try to capture Harry’s attention—falls of glitter, puffs of smoke—but he was too self-conscious to perform them and anyway there was never a good moment, what with Sirius and James always passing Harry between them like a Quaffle and Lily either grinning fondly or lying facedown on the sofa, seizing the opportunity for a much-needed moment of rest. He had taken to talking with her, mostly, when they went to see the Potter family, about books and weather forecasts and the latest magical contraptions for making coffee—anything that wasn’t babies, or the war.

And that was fine. There were things Remus wasn’t made for. This was simply one of them.

“I’m off to get more wet wipes,” James announced. “Harry’s cleaned us out.”

“Get some Earl Grey, too, would you?” Lily asked, arm flung over her eyes and feet up on the sofa’s armrest. “And strawberry jam. And those little cleaning things for the drain. And take Sirius with you, he looks like he could use some fresh air. Bit peaky, I’d say.”

“Didn’t realize the drain was acting up again. Damn,” James said, sticking his arms through his coat sleeves.

“Thanks for looking after my health,” Sirius added dryly, but he detached himself from Harry and followed James out the door.

The dust seemed to settle in the wake of their departure, the noise and energy swirling away, and then Lily sat up, looked at Remus, and said, “All right. It’s time.”

Remus blinked. “Sorry?”

“Come here.” Lily strode over to Harry’s bassinet. “Your turn.”

“Oh.” Remus’ stomach fluttered. “I—”

“He won’t bite. Well, he might. But he hasn’t got any teeth, so. Come on. You just need a moment when the Dynamic Duo isn’t crowding you out.”

Remus shifted nervously in place. “It’s just—how do I—what do I  _ do,  _ exactly, I mean, how do I—you know, erm—”

Lily picked up Harry, crossed to Remus, and thrust him at Remus’ chest. Remus’ arms came up automatically, elbows settling into the position he’d seen Sirius take hundreds of times, and a warm, surprisingly heavy bundle of four-month-old baby settled into his arms.

“Oh,” Remus said dumbly, looking down. Harry’s eyes were bright green and curious, his hair already sticking out in thick dark tufts, and there was a bubble of drool at the corner of his mouth. He smelled like milk and baby powder. He stared up at Remus. Remus stared back.

“You have held him before,” Lily said. “It’s all right.”

_ All right  _ did not seem the phrase for it. Harry had tiny creases in his eyelids. His nose was James’ nose. He reached out a pudgy dimpled hand and tried to pat Remus’ face, but he couldn’t quite reach.  _ All right  _ was a vast understatement. Harry was a terrifying miracle.

And Remus  _ had  _ held him before, but not with all the background noise turned down, not on his own like this, a long moment with just him and Harry. He stepped over to the couch in a daze and sat, adjusting Harry so he could perch on Remus’ lap. Harry reached out for Remus’ face again and Remus lowered his head obligingly. Harry’s fingers were wet.

“Thanks for that,” he said to Harry. “Now my chin is sticky.”

Harry gurgled and smiled at him.

“Oh, you’re pleased about that, are you? If you’re sticky everyone else had better be too, is that it?”

Harry babbled some nonsense.

“Good point,” Remus said, then remembered Lily and looked quickly up at her—this was right, wasn’t it, this was how you talked to a baby?—and saw to his surprise that her eyes were wet.

“Sorry,” she said hurriedly, wiping a hand across her face. “Just, er…” She sat on the sofa next to them and offered her finger to Harry, who promptly took it in his fist. Her shoulder brushed against Remus’. “I don’t like to talk about the war around Harry. But it’s—you know what it’s like. And worrying about what would happen to him if—if—” She took a deep shuddering breath. “I just feel better, watching you with him. All our friends. It feels like—like he’d be okay, if…”

Remus’ heart clenched. He felt a sudden, unexpected, unprecedented surge of protectiveness toward the baby in his arms. He bent down impulsively and kissed Harry on the forehead. Harry squirmed and drooled.

“He’ll be okay,” Remus said hoarsely. He moved closer towards Lily, pressing his body against hers. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “We’ll all make sure of it.”

 

**January 13, 1996**

In the first weeks of the new year Charlie Weasley showed up at an Order meeting at Number 12 with a young Romanian codebreaker in a leather jacket and big black boots who gave Sirius a just-too-long look through thick dark lashes. Constantin Macedonski leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers on the table with restless energy. He was bigger than Remus, sturdy and solid; he had met Charlie when a Romanian Ridgeback had started carrying off sheep near his village, and he still had a scar on his forehead to mark the occasion. As Mad-Eye rattled off gruff instructions about their latest efforts in Cornwall and the Highlands, Remus’ eyes moved between Macedonski and Sirius, his stomach fluttering with something he could not quite name.

“Damn,” Macedonski said when Charlie announced he had to be off. “My Portkey does not leave for another three hours.”

He slipped a glance at Sirius as he said this. The other Order members were gone or going. Macedonski said, “Usually I would welcome the chance to walk about London, but these days…”

“Stay here,” Remus said. Both Sirius’ and Macedonski’s eyes moved quickly to him. “We’ve got a big empty house and it’s just a few hours.”

“Thanks, Remus,” Charlie said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “You’re in good hands, Constantin. I’ll see you all soon.”

He vanished out the front door. Suddenly the house did seem very big, with only Remus, Sirius, and the stranger standing around the kitchen table, in a pocket of charged silence.

“Well, my friends,” said Constantin, “what shall we do to pass the time?”

His eyes flickered between Remus and Sirius, and Sirius’ eyes flickered to Remus’, and somehow all three of them, Remus could tell, knew exactly what was being asked.

“I’ve got some things to take care of,” Remus said. “I think I’ll head upstairs, if you don’t mind.”

“Are you certain?” Constantin asked, raising an eyebrow. “What is your English phrase? The more the merrier.”

“Or three’s a crowd,” Remus said, and, standing, squeezed Sirius on the shoulder. He could feel Sirius relax at the touch and couldn’t help but smile down at him, suddenly fond, and pleased, and nervous on his behalf. Remus took a breath—it wasn’t as if Constantin didn’t already know—and bent to plant a brief kiss on the top of Sirius’ head. “See you in a bit.”

He walked upstairs in a kind of daze. Below, he could hear the low noise of Sirius’ voice and Constantin’s laughter. It faded as he climbed higher, all the way up to the attic, where several boxes of Black family papers were waiting to be destroyed. His palms were sweating. Sirius had cast him a look as he left the room, a look that had begun as nervous and questioning and then had slid slowly into what Remus could only describe as a lecherous smirk. He thought he knew what that meant. He had anticipated sitting up in the attic and respectfully not imagining what was happening below. Sirius’ smirk suggested that he knew Remus better than that.

But was it really all right? Remus wondered as he lowered himself to the dusty floorboards, back against the slanted wall, knees up to his chest. Right now Constantin Macedonski might have his tongue in Sirius’ mouth. Surely Remus was not supposed to be thinking of that. Surely he was not supposed to be thinking of Sirius and the broad-shouldered Romanian rolling around together like wild creatures. Remus ought to keep his thoughts to himself and out of the kitchen or the bedroom or the hallway between the kitchen and the bedroom where maybe they’d gotten stuck, too frantic to go further. It was all right to be all right with Sirius sleeping with someone else, but surely not all right to be aroused by it.

But when, an hour later, Sirius came up the stairs calling his name and, crouching beside him with a growing grin all pink-cheeked and out of breath, put his hand on Remus’ hard untouched cock,  _ all right  _ seemed to be exactly what it was.

 

**October 12, 1981**

Remus knocked on the door of the Potters’ house at nine at night, nails bitten to the quick, hands moving restlessly in and out of his pockets. He could feel how exhausted he must look, feel the dark circles under his eyes and the drawn lines of his cheek, and beneath his tatty jacket a set of claw marks smarted on his skin. Sirius would be wondering where he was, but Sirius was always wondering that these days, wasn’t he?

“Coming!” He heard James’ voice echo down the corridor and shuffled uncomfortably; he had hoped James would be with Harry, watching him sleep, as he often did these days when he was at home. James and Lily had been talking about the Fidelius Charm. Soon this sort of late-night visit would be impossible.

Remus steeled himself and James opened the door, tense and frowning. “The thing you saw Sir Cadogan steal was the Fat Lady’s scarf,” Remus said hurriedly, not waiting for James’ safety question, and James murmured back, automatically, “You spent three hours in the Forbidden Forest for sneaking a chocolate pudding from the kitchens,” but his shoulders didn’t relax.

“Sorry, I just—” Remus began, and James cut in, “It’s not really a good time,” and Remus finished, “—hoped I could talk to Lily.”

James’ eyes narrowed with what Remus knew, with a sick swoop in his belly, was wariness; and then, belatedly, James smiled and said, “Oh, damn, she’s in the bath, I don’t think she’ll want—”

Remus was already preparing himself to turn away, tail between his legs and neck growing pink with shame, when from down the hall a voice shouted, “James Potter, don’t you dare make decisions on my behalf,” and James winced, and from somewhere else in the house came the sound of Harry waking up and starting to cry.

“Oh for—” James muttered, looking towards the sound, and yet Remus thought he hesitated just a split second longer before pushing the door wider and letting him in. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he called out to Lily, and then, in a split second so quick Remus could almost have believed he’d hallucinated it, James leaned close and whispered something to Remus—three short words, three syllables like darts to his chest—before hurrying off to calm his son.

Remus struggled to breathe, the air knocked out of him, ears buzzing and head peculiarly blank. So. He was right, then, He watched James’ receding back, feeling something not unlike a thousand tiny needles in his skin, pricking sharp as his lungs returned to normal. He clenched his fists and headed towards the bathroom.

“You can come in,” said Lily’s voice through the door. “I’m decent.”

She wasn’t, really; she was wrapped in a towel, her hair wet, sitting at the bottom of the recently-drained bathtub.

“Hi,” she said. For a second all Remus could feel was relief that she, at least, had not hesitated to let him inside. Then he saw that her eyes were rimmed red.

“Oh,” Remus said, flushing, “oh, I’m sorry, it _ isn’t _ a good time, is it—”

Lily cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Shut up, and close the door, and come here. I cry all the time these days, don’t worry, it’s nothing special.”

Remus looked at her wry smile, her thin shoulders, her knees dotted with drips of water, and felt his own eyes fill with tears.

“Sit,” Lily instructed, gently, and Remus perched on the side of the tub, taking care not to knock over Harry’s plastic boats and inflatable Giant Squid, and tried to still his shaking hands. “What’s up?”

“I…” he started. He did not know how to speak. What if—he swallowed convulsively, as if to push his thoughts back down.  _ What if she believes it, too. _ He rubbed his knee and avoided her eyes.

“Erm,” he said. The words did not want to come. They had been building inside him for days, maybe weeks now, and yet to say them aloud felt tantamount to betrayal. A gush of shame washed through him. His eyes spilled over.

“Things are—” he began. “Erm. At home. With—with Sirius. Things aren’t…they don’t feel…right.”

Lily let out a short, humorless laugh, the kind of jarring noise they all made these days though they never had before, before Marlene McKinnon’s death and the Prewett brothers’ disappearance and the prospect of going into hiding so deep they didn’t know when they’d see each other again. “Does anything, right now?”

Remus could not smile. Not even the brittle kind he offered Sirius in the mornings with his tea.

“No,” he said, still not meeting her gaze. “It’s more than that. He won’t…” He breathed in, squeezing his eyes tight. “He won’t  _ look  _ at me.”

“Oh, Remus,” Lily said, affection thick in her voice as she reached out and took hold of him with a damp hand, “we’re all under so much stress. James and I can’t stop bickering, I bit his head off this morning because he put too much jam on my toast—”

Remus shook his head so hard his ears rang. “I don’t—it’s not that. It’s not.”

“Honestly,” Lily said earnestly, and Remus could see her trying to make eye contact. Her thumb stroked gently across the back of his hand and he nearly sobbed at the tenderness of it. “Sirius is hardly the best at handling his feelings, is he? He’s probably terrified and miserable and doesn’t want to show it—”

“No.” Remus pulled his hand away and dug his fingernails into his palms.

Lily was silent. Water dripped from the side of the shower curtain. “What, then?” she asked, voice quiet.

Finally, Remus looked up. Her eyes were clear and bright and held nothing more than fond concern and the shade of sorrow they all carried around now—no guardedness, no suspicion. Remus, seized with both scalding gratitude and unaccountable shame, took a shaky breath.

“He thinks I’m the spy.”

Lily stared, shocked. “ _ What?  _ Of course he doesn’t.”

Remus nodded miserably. “I’m pretty sure.”

“What— _ why? _ ”

Her green eyes were wide, incredulous. So she really hadn’t known.

Remus fidgeted, looking down at his knees. “He just keeps asking where I’ve been, what I’m doing, even though Dumbledore told us all not to tell. He looks at me when I think I can’t see him, and he gets up early in the mornings so he’s out of bed before I wake up, and he hasn’t kissed me in  _ weeks _ —”

Remus was crying. Lily pressed a damp hand against his arm. “But—but have you talked to him about it?”

“Not exactly, but—but I know him, Lily. I know.”

For a second she still looked stubbornly in denial. He could see the moment she accepted it.

Anger spread like a thundercloud across her face. She sat up straighter, clutching the towel around her. “No.  _ No.  _ What a—if he really—what an absolutely  _ ridiculous _ —look, Remus, I’ll get James to talk to him, he’ll set him straight—”

“James,” Remus croaked, and she stopped, looking at him. He could barely get the words out: “James thinks so too.”

Lily stared. “No,” she said, wet hair shifting over her shoulders as she shook her head emphatically. “No, he doesn’t. He’s never said anything like that.”

Remus buried his face in his hands, feeling snot-covered and hot, a swollen fucked-up knot of misery and guilt, and wiped away tears that continued to fall. Lily looked so stubborn, so sure, that he almost didn’t tell her.

“What, Remus?” she asked, voice low and sharp-edged. “What is it?”

He drew a shuddering breath. “Right before I came in,” he said, “James whispered to me—he said—” He ground his palms against his eyelids, wishing he could just disappear. “He said—he said—” The silence was heavy and fraught. Water dripped from the faucet in the tub.  _ Plink. Plink.  _ “He said, ‘Don’t touch her.’”

Nothing, for a long moment.  _ Plink. Plink.  _ And then:

“He said  _ what? _ ” Lily asked. Danger bloomed in her voice, thunder, electricity gathering before a storm. “For fuck’s  _ sake _ —”

She gripped the side of the tub and lifted herself up, towel slipping dangerously low, as Remus, startled, looked over at her; she was a tower of red hair and damp skin and reddening cheeks and outrage. She was clearly prepared to march down the hall, naked if necessary, and give James a piece of her mind, the carpet and Harry and her marriage be damned. But Remus, though swelling balloonlike with a painful kind of love, put out a hand to stop her.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please.”

She whipped her head to look at him, glaring. “James Potter is an absolute  _ idiot _ of a man with no brains in his head whatsoever, and I am going to set him straight, Remus, so help me Merlin—”

“Wait,” he said pleadingly. “Just—not—” 

_ Not while I’m here _ , he couldn’t say.  _ Don’t make me see what it looks like when he doesn’t believe you. _

Slowly, after a long moment, Lily sank back down, gathering the towel back around her body. “All right,” she said. “All right. She sighed. “But later—I’ll tell him off, Remus, honestly, and he’ll get Sirius’ head screwed on straight. Promise.”

She believed it. But Remus knew all too well that she could not make that promise. Not about James, and certainly not about Sirius. He squeezed his eyes shut. 

“And what if they don’t listen?”

Lily took in a sharp breath. Her eyes narrowed. Her face set in stubborn decision. “Well then. We’ll move out.”

Remus looked over at her, sure he had misunderstood. “We’ll—what?”

“You. Me,” Lily said calmly. “I’ll take Harry and we’ll—we’ll find a flat. The three of us. Somewhere else. Somewhere safe. I  _ will  _ get James to listen, but if not, then, fuck him. Fuck them both.”

“You can’t,” Remus said hoarsely, staring at her. “You can’t—you can’t leave James—”

“I can and I will,” she said. Her chin pointed up and her eyes were steely.

“I’m not worth that,” he made himself say.

She looked furious. “Of course you are. And I don’t want Harry to live with someone who says  _ Don’t touch her  _ to one of his best friends about his wife, as if you were some sort of monster and I was some naive idiot with no brains in my head or—or ability to protect myself—”

“You’d really do that?” Remus choked out. It was as impossible as  _ We don’t mind that you’re a werewolf  _ and as heartwrenchingly world-shifting as  _ We’ve become Animagi for you.  _ Now, as then, Remus felt as though the earth might open below his feet and swallow him whole.

“Yes.” One word, firm and simple.

She reached out and took his hand. They sat there in silence for a moment, squeezing their fingers tight. Remus felt, for the first time in months, a dawning crest of hope.

And then:

“The Fidelius Charm,” he said. The fragile happiness building inside him fell away, swiftly, gently, as part of Remus had already known it must. “You’re going into hiding.”

Lily stared at him.

“You can’t take Harry away from James and not tell him where you’re going.” Remus squeezed her hand once more, then pulled away. “And—and I can’t go into hiding, my work for the Order, it—I can’t.”

“No,” Lily said, soft but mutinous. “No.”

“Yes.”

Misery settled over her, thick like a shroud. “Oh, Remus.”

They sat together as the silence stretched on. Remus had a vivid, belated image of the three of them in a cramped flat, with Lily and Harry in the bedroom and him kipping on the couch, of water boiling over on the stove and Remus learning haphazardly to change nappies; and though he knew they’d have been deeply unhappy his chest swelled with a hard lump of something that felt too painful and sharp-edged to be simple gratitude, for the fleeting picture, for the fact that Lily would tell James and Sirius both to fuck off because of him.

But she couldn’t, and he couldn’t let her.

“Thank you,” he said softly. She opened her mouth to speak, and then footsteps sounded suddenly in the hall and James flung open the door.

They looked at him, as he took in the scene, Remus sitting on the edge of the tub, Lily in her towel, red-eyed but clearly unharmed, and saw the tension leave his shoulders.

“It was—getting awfully quiet in here—” he said falteringly.

“Oh, James,” Lily said, voice soft.

Remus stood. He wanted to bend down and kiss Lily on the cheek. But he thought he had better not.

“Thank you,” he said. As he passed James he felt him bristle away. “I won’t bother you again.”

He left, and shut the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Robert Frost, "Mending Wall."


	8. A portal, a ship in full sail raising anchor

**June 8, 1998**

The whispers are so loud now. They fill the echoing chamber, bouncing off hard stone and cold marble. The veil is fluttering constantly, not a gentle, occasional airy lift but the rapid noisy movement of fabric buffeted by wind. Remus’ curtains used to do that, in his great-uncle’s house, when sea-winds whistled cold through the windows.

_We’ll get some caulk. Tomorrow, when the shops are open._

The earlier memory rises up in Remus: in bed with Sirius on New Year’s Day. Laughing, Sirius’ hand between his legs. _The eyes that fix you._ Remus safe under the covers and under Sirius’ body, pinned by his weight, secure. Remus safe in his seaside cottage, the wide dark world shut out. Yet the wind, always, coming in through the cracks.

Sirius’ hair after a nighttime motorbike ride, windswept, a beautiful chaos.

The veil flutters, and Remus can feel the breath of whisper-filled wind on his face.

 

**November 4, 1996**

Dinner at the Weasleys’, and the noise was reaching a peak Remus couldn’t quite bear. Dishes clattering, Molly bustling, the low tones of Kingsley carrying on a very solemn conversation with Arthur, the clock chiming, Bill laughing. Grateful as he was to be back within wizarding society, he couldn’t handle much of it for too long. Whether it was the absence of the forest sounds he’d gotten used to while tracking down the latest wild werewolf pack or the constant, possibly eternal, awareness of the gaping hole where Sirius Black had once lived and breathed and made quite a lot of noise, Remus wasn’t sure. But the clink of silverware landing in the sink was setting his nerves on edge. How much easier it would be to be alone, folding the edges of his narrow world around himself once more.

He opened his mouth to make his apologies but felt, suddenly, a sharp jab under the table. Startled, he looked up to find Nymphadora Tonks giving him a meaningful glance. She jerked her head towards the front door and produced a pack of cigarettes from her long black coat.

Remus opened his mouth again to speak and once again he felt a jolt of pain as Tonks kicked his shin.

 _Hush_ , she mouthed at him, and then, with a surreptitious glance toward the kitchen (not that surreptitious; he could see why stealth had not been her strength on her Auror exams) got up quietly from the table. She made her way to door and Remus followed, bemused.

“Phew,” Tonks said as he shut the door behind them. She already had a cigarette clenched between her teeth and was pulling a lighter from her pocket. “Want one?”

Remus shook his head. He’d stopped smoking back in 1981, possibly as an obscure form of penance, and had never bothered to start up again.

“Sorry about the subterfuge,” Tonks said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. For a moment it held its shape, a puff of grey in the cold November air. “Didn’t want Molly catching us.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well,” Tonks said. She glanced back at the bright windows of the Burrow and took a few steps away, into the haphazard terrain of the Weasleys’ garden. She found a low wall and, brushing dirt and what looked like a stray gnome tooth off the top, leaned against it. “Any chance you’ve noticed Molly being especially, ah, _Molly_ tonight?”

Molly had in fact been particularly attentive, offering Remus seconds and thirds and making a few meaningful comments about the negative effects of isolation that seemed to be aimed in his general direction. He didn’t especially welcome the attention but he was well aware that she, like everyone else, could see the dark circles under his eyes and the bite marks on his neck.

“Just the usual, I’d imagine,” Remus replied.

Tonks winced, though with a lightness that made the pinched expression slide right off her young face. “Yeah. Not so much, I’m afraid.” She took a drag on the cigarette and exhaled. She had a style of smoking, insouciant and casual in a way that somehow nonetheless managed to seem dramatic, that reminded Remus of Sirius. They still didn’t bear much family resemblance but Tonks, at times, mirrored the way Sirius moved, the theatrical flick of cigarette ash, the sly tilt of the head.

“Molly’s got it in her head that you and I ought to go out.”

Remus blinked at her.

“She…what?” he asked.

Tonks crinkled up her nose. “You. Me. Dating.”

“Why on earth,” he began.

She grinned at him.

“Not that,” he said hurriedly, “not that you aren’t. Er.”

“Relax, god, Remus,” she said. “This isn’t a come-on. Believe me, you’d know if it were. I’ve been told I’m…unsubtle.”

He looked at her bright pink hair and ankle-length black coat and rows of silver earrings and felt a smile rising to his face.

“Yeah,” she said cheerfully. “Also things usually go a bit pear-shaped when I try to flirt, I always end up with my foot in my mouth or my mouth in the wrong place—I’ve been known to go in for a kiss and end up with a mouthful of nose—”

“So why,” Remus interjected hurriedly, feeling exhaustion threatening to creep up on him once more, “does Molly think that—”

“Ah. Right. Well, when you were away this last time, I might have,” Tonks scuffed at the ground with her boot, “I might have been talking about you a bit.” The tips of her ears were turning the same rosy shade as her hair. “Just—I was a little tipsy, possibly, and I might have said some things…”

“What things?” Remus asked, a looming sense of doom pooling in his stomach at whatever Molly Weasley might have heard a drunk Nymphadora Tonks saying about him.

“Just that you were. You know.” She sighed. “The best of us.”

Remus opened his mouth, then shut it.

“I might have gone on a bit about how you’re out there tramping through the wilderness, living in caves, and risking your neck to try and convince a bunch of people who’d just as soon bite you as look at you to fight on the side of the very wizarding society that’s treated you like shit for your whole life. Or something like that.”

Tonks gave him a lopsided smile.

“Sorry if that’s condescending,” she said.

“I—no,” Remus said. In fact he was a little bit stunned. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought the same thing, but hearing someone else put it into words was more of a relief than he could have imagined.

“Tonks…” he began, and then, a thought occurring to him before he could stop it, “Wait. I just—I appreciate your—but—I do want to make it clear—I don’t—I’m not—” He took a deep breath. For a second he waited for the usual chorus of alarms to start ringing in his head, all the reasons he shouldn’t say this aloud. But in the emptiness he lived inside these days, deadening as a Muffling Charm or padded walls, he heard nothing.

“I just want to make sure you know I’m not, erm, available. I’m not…really attracted to women.”

Tonks inhaled sharply, taking in what was clearly too much smoke, and at the same time managed, from a sitting position, to stub her toe against the low wall. For a moment she struggled with these competing situations, breathing heavily through her nose and raising her foot above the ground as her eyes watered. After a moment she got herself back under control.

“I…actually figured,” she said, only wheezing a little. “I mean. I suspected. Not that, erm,” she was turning pink again, but she looked him right in the eye, “not that I’m exactly, erm, a woman. Actually. But. Point still stands that neither of us is attracted to each other.”

Remus looked at her wordlessly, eyes wide, utterly incapable of deciding which part of that statement to process first.

“You’re not…” he began, a strange lightness, almost lightheadedness, settling somewhere in the vicinity of his ears.

“Not, er. Not exactly.” Tonks waved her hands in the air, in a vague sort of way, sending out sparks from her cigarette that immediately burned a hole in the leaves of the creeping vine next to them. “Maybe it’s the Metamorphmagus thing, but gender never seemed to quite…work for me.”

“Oh,” Remus said. An unpopped bubble was rising in his chest, pushing at the base of his throat. “ _Oh._ ”

“Yeah. Sometimes it sits right, sometimes it doesn’t. Hard to explain. Or, well, not really. But. Hard for other people. You can keep calling me she, by the way, that’s fine, it’s as good as anything else. But for Merlin’s sake _please_ never Nymphadora. God. For, like, a million reasons, _obviously_ , but when I’m feeling more, you know, not so much like a woman, it’s particularly horrendous.”

Remus nodded, still slightly dizzy with the revelation.

Tonks stubbed her cigarette out on the wall. “So.”

“Erm,” Remus said, clearing his throat, suddenly realizing he ought to speak, “thank you for—erm—trusting me with—”

Tonks waved her hand at him, wrinkling her nose. “Don’t. I mean, I’m glad you’re fine, but let’s skip this part, maybe? We’re, well, not in the same boat, but on the same sea, anyway, so.”

“How did you…” Remus began. “About me…?”

Tonks shrugged. “Just a feeling, I guess. It makes sense. I mean, obviously Molly doesn’t know, or she wouldn’t think we were, whatever she thinks, pining after each other.”

“I’m much older than you,” Remus felt the need to point out. “I knew you when you were just a teenager. Not to mention…” He gestured to the bite marks on his neck. “Hardly a good match anyway.”

“I don’t care about that,” Tonks said dismissively. “But I’m sure if Molly realized—I mean, I’m Sirius’ cousin, and it hasn’t been that long since…”

Remus sucked in a breath, as hard as if he’d been gut-punched. He stared at her, his stomach sinking to somewhere around his ankles.

“Fuck,” Tonks said, wincing. “Sorry.” She looked genuinely pained, now, at her clumsiness. “I have been meaning to say…I’m so sorry about what happened, Remus. I mean, you and he _were_ …weren’t you?”

Remus nodded, blinded suddenly by a film of unshed tears. He’d really believed that no one living, save one person who was for all intents and purposes dead to him forever, knew what he’d lost when Sirius died. He’d been keeping that secret tucked within him, nurturing it like a dying ember, held inside his closed hands. The intimacy of it had almost, he’d thought, made up for the fact that he was not recognized as mourning Sirius in any particularly special way. That no one knew to ask if he wanted to keep Sirius’s socks, toothbrush, unwashed pillowcase. The corkscrewing pain of Tonks’ sympathetic gaze made him realize what rubbish that was: it hurt, but the way a doctor’s hands would hurt as they probed a wound in order to determine how it might be healed.

He made a tiny, involuntary choked-off noise and all at once Tonks flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist and squeezing tight. She stepped on his toes a little bit and the surprise of it knocked his breath out of him but he hugged back, realizing for the first time since June that it might be possible to not feel quite so horribly alone.

 

**January 3, 1976**

_I’m at the Potters’. Please come. -Sirius_

Sirius’ note was delivered at five in the morning by the Potters’ big tawny owl, who tapped insistently on the window until Remus’ mother, bleary-eyed with sleep, stumbled over to let her in.

“I thought there’d been some sort of falling out between them?” she asked Remus, sitting at the foot of his bed, the terse scroll of parchment unrolled between them. Remus, who had not spoken to James since his outburst upon seeing him and Sirius kissing in Honeydukes’ cellar, nodded slowly. Sirius had been far angrier than Remus, whose first instinct had been to apologize, so if he was staying with the Potters, it meant something had happened that was even more catastrophic than James—James who had at twelve years old stroked Remus’ shoulders as Remus sobbed and swore he didn’t care that he was a werewolf, _really, it’s amazing, Remus, you turn into a WOLF, how awesome is that?_ —James curling his lip and spitting out that they had “fucked it all up by turning into a couple of shirtlifters.”

Since then Remus had been reshaping the edges of his world. Narrowing them down to exclude James, and maybe Peter, and everything that meant: the stag and the rat, the Map, laughing at breakfast and sneaking into the kitchens at night. Now there would be just him and Sirius. He couldn’t tell anyone else, not after what had happened with James. Broom cupboards and bed curtains drawn tight, dark and close as the low secret passageway to the Honeydukes cellar.

It would be all right. He could stay in that secret passageway, he thought, for a very long time.

“Do you want to go?” Remus’ mother asked. She was looking at him in the way Remus caught her doing sometimes, the way he did not think most mothers looked at their sons, as if he were a fully grown adult with a schedule and priorities she neither fully understood nor felt able to override. It made Remus feel lonely, and old, and grateful.

He nodded.

Three hours later, the Knight Bus dropped him off half a mile from the Potters’ pleasantly ramshackle three-story house and he walked through the cold morning though open fields of half-tended country, high tangled grasses, an attempt at an orchard, the swimming pond. When he reached the Potters’ bright red front door, he hesitated. Despite all his efforts, he had not been able to fully excise James’ shocked face from his head, and he felt a tug of guilt and anger and shame whenever it floated into his consciousness. As he was standing there, stomach in knots, the door opened.

Remus barely had time to register the red welt on Sirius’ cheek before he was nearly bowled over by James launching himself at Remus and wrapping him tight in a hug.

“I’m an idiot,” he said fervently, voice muffled in Remus’ shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I just got scared that everything would change and the two of you wouldn’t need me anymore and of course I don’t mind that you’re, that you’re, you know, and I wanted to tell you but I felt so awful and guilty and then I didn’t know what to say, and Pete was no help, he never is, and then it had gone on so long that—”

Remus, half-stifled, warm with relief and off-kilter with the suddenness of James’ change of heart and preoccupied with the image of Sirius’ drawn face, squeezed James once and then pulled back.

“Thanks,” he said quietly. “Er—Sirius—what…?”

James jumped back. “Right. Sorry. Erm…”

Sirius looked at Remus, who wanted, badly, to run his thumb along the welt on his cheek and let Sirius bury his head in Remus’ chest as he explained what had happened. Instead they met each other’s eyes awkwardly until James shifted next to them and Sirius said, “I’ve left home.”

His tone was aiming, clearly, for casual, even airy. It missed the mark and came out choked and right on the edge of desperate.

Remus’ stomach bottomed out.

“For good?”

Sirius nodded.

Remus, at a loss for words, felt himself fill slowly with dread. “Sirius…your cheek…”

Sirius cast his eyes down. “My mother’s ring. When I said I was leaving. She…”

The thought of Walburga Black’s clawlike hand coming down on Sirius’ face made Remus’ gut clench. He knew, or at least was nearly certain that he knew, that Sirius’ mother had never hit him before. The Blacks did not need to use physical violence to hurt people. Besides, they cared too much about preserving their family’s flawless aristocratic features to mark them, he thought, a sudden vicious anger spiking straight down his middle. He took a steadying breath. “Why—” But then he stopped. He didn’t want to intrude, to push Sirius. He didn’t want to ask Sirius questions he’d rather not answer.

“Something about me marrying my cousin Bellatrix,” Sirius said, his eyes still on the ground. “And I told her I was gay”—Remus’ eyes widened in shock—“and she laughed and said she wasn’t surprised and that I could, erm—sleep with—whoever I wanted, like the rest of the family, as long as I married well and produced Black family heirs. So. I said I was leaving.”

It was the most blandly and succinctly Remus had ever heard Sirius tell a story.

“Shit,” he said, feeling inadequate. “I’m—I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” Sirius said. “Erm. Can I…” He fell silent and his eyes flickered toward James.

“Oh,” said Remus after a moment, understanding. His eyes moved to James too. “Yes. I mean, yes, of course—”

Sirius launched forward and Remus caught him. Sirius was shaking as Remus held him tight, relieved that he didn’t need to find the words to say what he was feeling, that he could just hold him like this. He tried to push the awareness of James’ presence out of his mind and cupped the back of Sirius’ head in his hand, fingers tightening around his hair.

When Sirius finally pulled away, James cleared his throat. His cheeks were pink and his eyes moved nervously between them, but he said staunchly, “Sirius is staying here. For good. My parents said it was all right.”

Remus felt a tiny flutter of jealousy. But his family couldn’t take Sirius in, of course they couldn’t, and the Potters had money and space and the kind of cheerful indulgence that came easily to elderly parents of late only children.

“I told him to write to you,” James said abruptly. “I thought you should be here.”

“Oh,” said Remus. “I…”

“James, don’t make your friends stand on the doorstep!” Mrs. Potter’s voice rang through the corridor, and then she appeared, smiling and wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “Hello, Remus. We’re so happy to see you. I’ve made breakfast, come along, you must be famished, and you’ve come all this way so early in the morning…”

She chattered on and Remus looked at James and Sirius.

“Come on, Padfoot,” James said, “go on. It’s your house now too.”

So Remus followed Sirius and James down the hall, towards the smell of frying eggs and buttered toast and the wide-open sunlit kitchen.

 

**January 3, 1997**

Remus had planned to move back into his great-uncle’s seaside house over the holidays. With Sirius gone and Grimmauld Place shut up, he was not sure what else he could do. He’d been moving around since June, doing things for the Order, meeting up with wild werewolves, and he hadn’t had much of a home base. Yet he was reluctant to settle down. Returning to the rickety clifftop house, the salt air, the stack of battered paperbacks, the traces of his twelve years there (coffee rings on the table, bread flour in the pantry, heavy fisherman’s sweaters in the closet), felt at once like a step back in time and a final step. He had told himself while living there that the life he had carved out for himself had been enough. Small, by anyone else’s standards, but big enough if you counted all the space inside his head. Then Sirius had returned, and he had remembered how much bigger a life could really be.

Yet what could he do but go back?

Something in him must have protested, because when Molly Weasley had offered to put him up at the Burrow for the holidays he’d accepted almost immediately. He knew what the chaos of that house could to to him—headaches and panicky bursts of claustrophobia—and yet he said yes anyway. Harry would be there, and an altogether different clock than the one counting down the days to his impending isolation was ticking inside him, powered still by a promise made to Sirius on the rooftop one cold February day and by a bitter burning regret for the words they had said to each other in June. Harry was supposed to know by now.

Remus had been trying to imagine how Sirius would have wanted to tell him. He thought maybe Sirius would have suggested they have dinner with Harry, just the three of them. He might have prepared mushroom risotto, the one dish he’d learned to make perfectly during the after-Hogwarts years, standing over the fragrant pot in his and Remus’ tiny apartment, wearing a pink KISS THE COOK apron James had bought him as a joke. He’d have settled the three of them in the dining room at Grimmauld Place and, at some point during the meal, he’d have put his fork down, and leaned in, a serious look on his face. _So, Harry…_

Remus didn’t think he could manage dinner alone with Harry at the Burrow. He could barely manage a few minutes alone. It wasn’t until after the New Year’s celebrations had passed and Molly and Arthur’s older sons had returned to their homes and various guests had cleared out that Remus caught Harry by himself, folded up on the Weasleys’ lumpy sofa, staring out the window.

It was time.

“Harry,” he said, hovering in the doorway. His voice came out cracked and strained. “May I have a word?”

Harry blinked up at him. His eyes were unfocused behind his glasses. Remus hadn’t actually seen him crying this last week, but he thought from the slightly puffy look Harry’s face had taken on recently that he must be doing so in private.

Harry nodded. Remus took a breath, stomach churning, and sat next to him on the couch. He felt the space beside him, the empty cushion, felt it like a cold spot or gaping hole.

 _So, Harry._ But Sirius wouldn’t have started off like that, so grave, like Dumbledore announcing the latest piece of bad news. He wouldn’t have made risotto and sat in the heavy-draped dining room of his family’s house. He’d have…he’d have baked a cake, maybe. Six layers high and covered in chocolate frosting. And when Harry had cut into it, each layer would have been a different color of the rainbow.

 _Surprise!_ Sirius would have said, grinning.

Remus settled onto the sofa, not too close to Harry, so that he wouldn’t make him uncomfortable. Outside the windows, snow had piled up and the light came through in an odd gray sort of way. Muted. Quiet. Remus felt dread piling up in his belly, old fears, James’ face superimposing itself on Harry’s, and that wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t stop seeing it, shocked and horrified in the Honeydukes cellar.

Maybe Sirius would have wanted to send Harry a Howler. A joke Howler. He’d have sent it flying up the stairs and into Harry’s bedroom one morning: SIRIUS BLACK AND REMUS LUPIN WOULD LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT THEY ARE SHAGGING. DON’T WORRY, YOUR PARENTS GAVE US THEIR BLESSING. ALSO, COME DOWN TO BREAKFAST BEFORE YOUR GODFATHER BURNS THE BACON. Remus could see Sirius enjoying that plan immensely, if Remus would have let him carry it out, that is, which he wouldn’t have. Remus suddenly missed the argument they never got to have about it so much it was like a sharp pain to his side.

Remus took a deep breath. He glanced at Harry, whose eyes were unfocused, staring at his knees.

“I want to talk about about Sirius,” Remus began. He saw Harry start a little and his hands tighten around his legs. He looked at Remus, and then, after a long moment, nodded.

“So,” Remus said. He felt peculiar. A little light-headed. “So. There’s something you don’t know.”

 _How much did your aunt and uncle tell you about the facts of life?_ Sirius might have said, pretending at concern, at paternal self-importance. _I think it’s time you learn how babies are made. Or, well, in this case, NOT made, though not for lack of trying._

“How much did you know about…”

Remus trailed off. He had a whole speech planned, a winding path backwards through Sirius’ time on the run, in prison, in London, at Hogwarts, back to a hushed library and a circle of light. Each step along the way was meant to prepare Harry, to soften the blow. To give him a little hint of what was coming. Just in case—well. Just in case.

“Sirius and I,” he began. Harry looked at him, mute and unhappy. Remus took a breath.

 _Just tell him_ , he can hear Sirius saying, warm and close in his ear. _Just tell him, Remus._

“Sirius and I were lovers,” he said.

A silence: a long, ballooning silence, stretching bigger and bigger, as Remus’ words slowly sank into the atmosphere, slowly acquired meaning, slowly took shape.

As the silence stretched on, Harry remained immobile, unresponsive. Remus, without meaning to, held his breath.

Then Harry’s head jerked back and his feet landed on the floor.

“ _What?_ ”

His eyes were wide with shock. Remus felt a lump start to form in his throat: a large, hard, rough-edged obstruction, stopping up his windpipe. His ears were, oddly, growing hot. “We—we were…”

“How long?” Harry was staring at him. His fingers gripped the edges of the sofa cushion. “Since—since after Azkaban?”

Remus nodded, a faint ringing in his ears. “And before,” he said softly. “Since school.”

Harry stood up, abruptly, and walked jerkily over to the window. The snow was piled up on the sill, grey and thick. Harry stared out, then turned back to Remus.

“So, when I was a baby…?” he began to ask, then stopped speaking with a convulsive swallow. His eyebrows were furrowed. His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides.

Remus nodded again.

And then, quite abruptly, Harry burst into tears.

Remus stared at him, the buzzing in his ears intensifying as Harry cried choked-off sobs, burying his face in his hands. Remus’ limbs grew strangely heavy. Limp. He could not make a move toward or away from Harry. He could only sit and watch him cry.

“I know it might take some getting used to,” he forced himself to say, finally, heart beating off-kilter in his chest. But Harry cut him off.

“So when my parents died,” he managed, the words bursting through his tears, “you and Sirius—you were— _together_ —”

“Yes.” Remus was numb. He could not feel his fingers.

This was worse than James.

“So when I was supposed to go live with Sirius,” Harry said, swallowing hard, “after—after my parents—I would have—I would gone to live with both of you?”

He looked at Remus, face streaked with tears.

“Yes,” said Remus slowly, confusion fogging his brain. “Yes, if…”

“So I could have grown up with you and Sirius.” Harry’s cheeks were flushed. “This whole time. I should have been living with _both_ of you.”

Remus stared at him.

Harry launched himself forward and buried himself in Remus’ sweater, arms holding him tight in an awkward hug. His body shook, muffled sobs emerging from the region of Remus’ stomach.

Remus, for a second, could not move. Then, slowly, he raised his arms and wrapped them around Harry.

“We should have told you ages ago,” he said, quiet, ashamed, wondering, unspeakably grateful. And he held Sirius’ godson and sent an apology into the ether, through the veil, to wherever Sirius was now.

 _You were right,_ he thought. _What you said that last day, you were right._

_I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from John Crowley's lovely novel _Little, Big_.
> 
> I'm posting this between tumblr's announcement of their new anti-NSFW policy and the date that policy takes effect, and everyone in fandom seems pretty uncertain about what's going to happen. you can still find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ebp-brain), at least for now. but you can also find me on [dreamwidth](https://earlybloomingparentheses.dreamwidth.org)!


	9. Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us

**September 1, 1971**

Remus stepped onto the Hogwarts Express as soon as boarding began and slipped into an empty compartment, pulling the door shut behind him. His heart was pounding and his skin was flushed and hot, like he was about to get in trouble. He felt certain that if someone were to come into his compartment before the train started moving, it would be to burst in, officiously outraged, and escort him back onto the platform. _Let the door stay shut,_ he wished fervently, _let it just stay shut long enough that we’ll be on our way to Hogwarts and it’ll be too late to kick me off._

Once the train was moving, Remus promised himself, he could imagine what it would be like to be at Hogwarts. He could allow himself to picture every minute detail: quills and books and staircases and classrooms, turrets and towers, breakfast, lunches, and dinners. The Great Hall. The greenhouses. Himself, tucked in the library somewhere, learning magic. In short, everything he would have been, under any other circumstances, imagining for years now, if things had been normal. If _he_ had been normal. If it had ever been certain he would get to go to Hogwarts.

Once the train was moving, he promised himself, they couldn’t make him leave. He would just sit there, enclosed in this safe little compartment, and no one would notice him, and no one would realize they’d made a horrible mistake, _why on earth would he ever believe he could go to Hogwarts, doesn’t he know what he is?_ If he sat here alone until the train started to move, no one could come in and tell him he didn’t belong.

But just as he heard the wheels screech into motion and felt the train judder beneath his feet, the door of the compartment slammed open and three boys stumbled in, laughing as they tripped over each others’ feet.

“Oh, hello!” said the one with messy dark hair and glasses.

“Sorry to barge in, but there’s nowhere else to sit,” said the short one with apple cheeks and untied shoelaces.

“You don’t mind, do you?” said the third boy. He grinned at Remus: sharp teeth and a light in his eyes. “No good being alone. By the way,” he added, flopping down next to Remus, who sucked in a startled breath, “I’m Sirius Black.”

 

 

**June 1, 1998**

Remus listened idly to the sound of chatter behind the closed sitting room door as he passed by with a cup of tea. Tonks and Kingsley Shacklebolt and a couple other Aurors were inside. They still gathered here at Grimmauld Place sometimes, those who were left after the war, perhaps out of habit or some sort of unspoken solidarity in their grief. Today, the talk seemed lighter than usual, judging by the cadence of the murmured voices within. Remus paused, struck by the strangeness of hearing someone inside laugh—when had anyone last laughed in this house?—and a few words caught his ear.

“—apparently the Unspeakables are totally at a loss—”

Somebody said something too low for Remus to catch, and there was another burst of laughter. He caught a few snatched words— _cleanup, changes,_ something that might have been _too bizarre_ —and then:

“—but what’s happening with the veil is the most peculiar thing.”

He froze. His pulse jumped in his throat and he leaned closer to the closed door. But the voices had lowered, and a hushed stream of muffled whispers was all he could make out.

Heart pounding, he waited. He sipped his tea, trying to keep himself steady. _Nothing has happened_ , he told himself. Finally, he heard the sound of chairs scraping across the floor. He tried not to look too much like he’d been eavesdropping.

“Hello, Remus,” Kingsley said as he came into the hall. “Good to see you.”

Remus nodded hello to him and the others who filed out of the room, the traces of unaccustomed laughter still on their faces. The last to emerge was Tonks.

“Oh,” she said, stopping short. She shifted her gaze back and forth, then gave him a slightly-too-big smile. “Hi, Remus. I, er—didn’t realize you were out here.”

“Mm-hmm,” Remus said. He looked at her, waiting.

“Well,” she said, “er,” and scratched her ear. “I’d best be off—got some paperwork to take care of, ugh, my least favorite thing—”

“Tonks.”

She turned, her bright green hair clashing with the sober wine-colored wallpaper. “Hmm?”

“Are you going to tell me what you were discussing in there?”

Tonks blinked. She raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms. “You mean the highly confidential Auror business? I don’t think so.”

Remus advanced toward her a few steps, putting his tea down on an ornate little marble-topped side table. “Is that what it was? Sounded to me more like office gossip than anything classified. Or are the Aurors working with the Department of Mysteries now?”

“Remus…”

“Come on, Tonks.”

After a moment she gave him another bright smile and perched on a stiff wooden chair that rested against the wall of the corridor, her head tilting back against the carvings of peacocks on its frame. “Okay, okay, goodness. You must be desperate for some gossip. So, it turns out that after the Department of Mysteries was, you know, pretty much decimated two years ago, the Ministry was too busy with the war to be able to put it back in order. And now the Unspeakables are finally cleaning it up. Apparently it’s _bizarre,_ some of the stuff that happened when things got messed up. Like, there’s a room with all these floating planets, right? Somehow it got contaminated by the room where they study time, and now Neptune only exists every other Tuesday. And,” she said, barely pausing for breath, “one of those weird brain things that attacked Ron Weasley tried to _eat_ one of the Unspeakables. Like, it twisted itself into the shape of a mouth and started making biting movements. Really odd stuff, fascinating, apparently they’re learning all sorts of new things—”

“Tonks.” Remus cut her off quietly. “What did they say about the veil?”

Tonks looked at him, biting her lip. Then all at once, she blew out a long breath and sank back in the chair.

“Fuck,” she said feelingly. She looked up at him. “Can’t you just leave it, Remus? It won’t do you any good.”

“No,” he said, surprising himself with his calm firmness. “No, I can’t.”

She rubbed her face in her hands. “Look, Remus, I just…” She took a deep breath and, fingers twisting together, said: “Okay. Here’s the thing. I remember, Remus. How you were when I came to visit you all those times the summer I was thirteen. How you were living. That tiny house with the rotting floorboards, and the damp, and the spiders—and I just—I know how you get when you’re upset, especially when you think it’s your fault somehow, and I don’t—I don’t want to tell you anything that might push you any closer in the direction of that house again.”

Remus swallowed. His skin felt tingly and unpleasantly warm. “It….it wasn’t as terrible as all that, Tonks.”

She threw up her hands. “And see, the fact that you can stand there and say that to me right now is the reason I’m so worried about you.”

He understood. He did, actually. He understood why she didn’t want to talk to him about Sirius and the veil. He even appreciated it, what she was trying to do for him.

“Tell me what they’re saying about the veil,” he said.

She let out a long, slow breath. “Okay. Okay, I will. But, look, it’s not even that—” She shook her head. “So, you know how some people hear whispers when they stand in front of the veil?”

Remus nodded. He had heard them, very, very faintly, on the day Sirius had fallen through.

“Well. Apparently they’re louder now.”

Remus’ stomach clenched, but not with any identifiable emotion. “What does that mean?”

Tonks shrugged. “They don’t know. Apparently the actual veil has been pretty active lately, too. Like, moving a lot more than usual.”

“So…” Remus said slowly.

“So.” There was a silence. Then Tonks said, almost tentatively, “You know, after Sirius—after he fell through, I….asked around about it. I mean, it’s all secret, of course, but I just wanted to—to understand. And it’s just…there is nothing to understand, really. It’s death. Everyone, almost everyone, for as long as the veil has been there—and no one can remember when it _hasn’t_ been there—has considered it a gateway into…whatever. The afterlife. Nothingness. And of course no one has ever come back out. So the fact that the whispers are louder, now?” Tonks shrugged. “The Unspeakables say that their best guess is that it’s because of the war. So many more people have experienced death. They’re more sensitive now, possibly. Or there’s just more…more death. In the…atmosphere, kind of.”

But Remus had snagged on one word: “ _Almost_ everyone?”

He had always assumed, from the moment he saw the black fluttering curtain and the stone archway, that that was the room of Death. He could feel it in the pit of his stomach, the tips of his fingers. Besides, there could hardly be a more unsubtle visual metaphor for the barrier between this world and the next than a dark-colored veil.

But: _almost?_

Tonks said slowly, “Apparently there have been a couple other theories, but they’ve mostly been dismissed as pure speculation. Some Unspeakables have hypothesized that it’s not actually a doorway into the afterlife, but into another, sort of, realm? An alternate dimension, as the Muggles would say.”

“And the other theory?”

Tonks shut her eyes tight for a moment, then said, quietly, reluctantly, “One or two Unspeakables have suggested that it’s not another world, but that it’s not really death either. That it’s just a sort of…room. A kind of holding cell, where everyone who’s fallen through the veil gets stuck. Forever.”

Remus stared at her. His ears felt hot. The top of his head tingled.

“Like a—” He swallowed, throat dry. “Like a prison?”

“Don’t!” Tonks was on her feet, hand shooting out to grab Remus by the wrist. She caught his gaze, looking at him urgently. “Don’t think that. You can’t, Remus. It’s almost certainly not true, it was some crackpot nineteenth-century wizard who came up with it, and—and—”

“What if he’s…” Remus’ voice came out in a hoarse whisper.

“ _Don’t_ ,” she said again. “Don’t think about it. Remus, I know you. I do. And I know that you twist yourself up in knots inside your head, and I know—I _know_ this is exactly the kind of thing you could spend the rest of your life thinking about. Thinking, is this my fault? Thinking, is Sirius trapped in some horrible little box for the rest of eternity? Thinking, should I be trapped in some little box, too? And then you’ll go back to that house by the sea and we’ll never see you again.” To Remus’ shock, Tonks’ eyes were glistening with tears. “Don’t, Remus. Please don’t.”

He couldn’t answer. He couldn’t say anything. He could only think of Sirius, trapped in some dark space with walls on every side. He could almost hear Sirius’ voice echoing back from two years before, one of the last things Remus had ever heard him say: _This is my_ worst fucking nightmare, _can’t you understand that?_

Tonks squeezed his wrist. She waited, but Remus couldn’t speak. Finally, she kissed him gently on the cheek and turned to go. But when she was nearly at the end of the corridor, Remus found his voice.

“And what if,” he said, sounding strange even to himself, “what if I decide to stop thinking and do something about it instead?”

Tonks stopped. Slowly, she turned around. “Well then,” she said quietly. “I’ll do anything you need to help.”

 

 

**June 18, 1996**

Sirius was almost at the front door of Grimmauld Place. Remus could hear him muttering to himself, re-casting concealment charms and sniping occasionally in the direction of his mother’s portrait. It was twelve minutes past midnight. Any minute now he would transform into Padfoot and slip out into the dark streets. He would sneak out, leaving Grimmauld Place for the first time since last fall. Remus knew this because Sirius had confided in him the week before when he was drunk on half a bottle of tequila Bill Weasley had left in the kitchen. He didn’t think Sirius remembered that he had told Remus about his plan.

Remus held his breath.

The door opened, but it wasn’t Sirius who opened it.

“Hello, Sirius,” said Albus Dumbledore’s deep voice. “Let’s have a little talk.”

Remus didn’t wait to hear Sirius’ response. He hurried back upstairs, face flushed, feeling as though his gut had been filled with thick, heavy treacle. He couldn’t quite manage to get out of earshot before hearing Sirius’ outraged roar.

He sat on their bedroom floor, face in his hands.

After perhaps ten minutes, he heard footsteps on the stairs.

Sirius wrenched opened the door. He stood there, eyes burning. Gaunt cheeks, sharp nose, black brows shadowing his face: he looked, in that moment, as dangerous as his wanted posters had proclaimed him to be.

“You fucking told Dumbledore on me,” Sirius said. His voice was shaking. He pointed a finger at Remus. “You told him.”

Remus’ throat was tight. He felt hot with shame, but he looked up at Sirius, still feeling, in some kernel of himself, stubborn and absolutely sure.

“I had to,” he said. “You were planning to sneak out.”

“Sneak out!” Sirius’ voice grew louder. He strode into the room. “This isn’t fucking Hogwarts, Remus. There’s no curfew. I can’t get _detention._ I’m a grown man.”

“Yes,” Remus said. His ears were buzzing. He wanted to stand, but he didn’t trust his legs. Instead, he looked up at Sirius, his lover, his best friend, towering over him, livid with anger. “Yes, you are. And you’d get a whole lot worse than detention if someone from the Ministry saw you.”

Sirius barked out a noise not quite close enough to a laugh to deserve the name. “The Ministry has its head buried too deep in the sand to see anything.”

“The Death Eaters, then—”

“That’s not your fucking problem,” Sirius snapped.

“It’s all of our problems if you’re taking risks that could get you captured or killed or thrown back into prison—”

“ _This_ is a fucking prison!” Sirius shouted. “I’m locked up here! I can’t do anything useful, can’t even go _outside_ —”

Remus pushed himself to his feet. “It’s terrible, I know, but you know it’s too dangerous—”

“Fuck, it’s like we’re fifteen again!” Sirius ran his hands through his wild hair. “ _It’s too risky, that’s not the plan, don’t you ever think about the consequences?_ How do you live your  _life_ like that?”

“I can remember a few times when it would have done both of us good if you had thought about the consequences for two seconds!” Remus said, stung.

“Really,” said Sirius, stopping dead.

“Yes.” Remus clenched his fists, breathing hard. “Yes, I can.”

“Has anyone ever told you what a bore you are?” Sirius’ tone was cold.

A disbelieving laugh tore its way out of Remus’ throat. “A bore. Is that what I am?”

“And a nag—”

“A nag.” Fury boiled up inside Remus. “Yeah. Right. A nag.”

“ _Oh, Sirius, don’t sneak out past curfew_ again, _oh, Sirius, don’t cast a flying spell on that motorbike, it’s_ dangerous, _you could_ hurt _yourself_ —”

“How about, _Oh, Sirius, don’t tell Severus Snape the biggest fucking secret I’ve ever trusted you with, don’t risk me hurting him and maybe killing him and then getting killed myself by a mob of lycanthrophobes just because you want a laugh_ —”

Sirius flinched as if Remus had hit him. He had grown quite pale.

“It wasn’t for a laugh,” he said quietly.

“No,” said Remus. “No, it was because you didn’t stop to _think._ Because you couldn’t be bothered to stop and think, even when you could have ruined my life.”

“It wasn’t—” Sirius burst out, then stopped. He took a deep breath. “It—fuck, Remus you know I—I…No. _No._ I’m not going to let you turn this one on me. Right now, what’s happening is that you called in Albus Dumbledore when I was planning to leave the house for a couple of hours _._ I was going to walk around the streets, invisible, as Padfoot. Nothing was going to happen.”

“You don’t know that. Don’t you get it? This is exactly my point, you don’t _think_ —”

“I’m trapped in this house!” Sirius clenched his fists at his sides. He took a few sharp, abortive steps, pacing the little stretch of floor. “I’m losing my goddamn _mind_ , Remus, and I can’t deal with it, I can’t, I have to—to get out, I have to—get some fresh air, see the fucking _sky_ —”

“Grow up!” Remus burst out. His breath was ragged, hard and fast. “I get it. It’s miserable here. But this isn’t about what you want right now, this isn’t—you need to be safe, Sirius, or you’ll end up in prison again, _real_ prison.”

“No!” Sirius shot back. “You don’t get it. You’ve never gotten it. I was trapped here my entire childhood and then I was locked in Azkaban for twelve years and now I’m trapped here again. My entire body feels like it’s about to break into a million pieces. I want to tear out my hair, literally, I want to just reach up and yank it out by the roots. My heart is racing, all the time. I can’t _breathe_ properly—” He threw up his hands. “This is my _worst fucking nightmare,_ don’t you understand that?”

Remus’ eyes filled suddenly, without warning, just spilling over. It wasn’t even really like crying. Just as if whatever barrier normally held his tears back had all at once given way.

“Your worst nightmare.”

He wiped the wet off his face. He tasted salt on his lips.

“Well. That’s only the second time you’ve felt like living with me was a nightmare, so.”

Sirius stared at him. Then his eyes grew wide. He turned away, silently, and stared out the tiny bedroom window. Remus knew that he had spent a long time as a child staring out that window, whenever his parents sent him to his room for not acting enough like a pureblood, a Slytherin, a Black.

“I didn’t know,” Sirius said, without turning around. “I didn’t know what you were doing, all those times you went away back then.”

“I was working for the Order. I was meeting with werewolves.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone.”

“You were gone all the time. You wouldn’t say where. You had dark circles under your eyes and you’d gotten horribly thin and you looked miserable and guilty and you wouldn’t tell me why—”

“So you thought I was the traitor. Logical next step, sure.”

Sirius finally turned to look him in the eyes. “If you’d just fucking _told me_ what was going on—”

“I wasn’t allowed to!” Remus cried. “We were all keeping secrets, we all had to. I couldn’t tell anyone, Sirius, it was too dangerous—”

He fell silent.

“Yeah,” said Sirius heavily. “Too dangerous.” He shook his head and said, with a hint of bitterness in his voice, “You know, sometimes I think you’d still just be reading about kissing if I hadn’t found you in the library that night.”

Remus swallowed, a sour taste at the back of his throat. “Maybe it would be better if I were.”

There was a long silence. Remus turned away.

But then he stopped, the images of a closed cell and then a closed casket flashing in rapid succession through his mind. He bit his lip, hard, and then said, staring at the floor: “I get that you don’t care about what happens to you, or how that affects me.” He tried to keep his voice flat and emotionless. “But next time you’re going to do something without thinking, remember Harry. Before you make any decisions to leave, or do something reckless. Think of him.”

Sirius stared at him, something new and dangerous glittering in his eyes. “You think I’m not thinking of Harry?” His voice was quiet now, in a way that made the hairs stand up on the back of Remus’ neck. “You think this isn’t about keeping him safe? About being there for him? One of these days, Remus, Harry is going to need my help. That’s why I’m still here.” He took a step forward. “And when that happens, by the way, I’m not going to sit and think it over. I’m not going to wait for permission from you or from Albus Dumbledore to leave this house. You can lecture me about whatever you want, but when it comes to Harry,” Sirius said, voice hard-edged as glass, “there’s no stopping to think.”

He left the room, brushing past Remus without even a backward glance.

 

 

**June 8, 1998**

And now here Remus is. Standing before the veil.

Tonks had helped him sneak in. Through the dark, blue-lit corridors. Through the strange spinning room with the twelve shut doors. Into the chamber where Sirius Black had fallen into nothingness.

Then she had squeezed his hand and left him alone.

It’s true about the voices being louder than before, Remus thinks. They are echoing off the walls, a steady din.

There is a chance that Sirius Black is trapped behind the fluttering veil, in a prison worse than his worst nightmare.

There is a chance that if Remus steps through the veil, he will find not Sirius, but simply—nothing. That he will become nothing. His own worst nightmare.

Words float into his head, rising up from the vast store within Remus’ mind, as they always do in difficult moments, important moments, as if they are woven into the very fabric of who Remus is. These particular words are from a Muggle poem that Remus read in snatches in his great-uncle’s house by the sea. It’s a long, old poem, written by a man, he later learned, who was slowly going blind. Remus identified, more strongly than he had expected to, with the character of Lucifer.

He stares at the veil and speaks the devil’s words aloud:

“And that must end us, that must be our cure:

To be no more. Sad cure! For who would lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being,

Those thoughts that wander through eternity,

To perish, rather, swallowed up and lost

In the wide womb of uncreated night

Devoid of sense and motion?”

_To be no more._

But another phrase drifts into Remus’ head, not Milton’s, not any poet’s, but Sirius’. _When it comes to Harry, there’s no stopping to think._ Those words have haunted Remus since the day Sirius fell through the veil. He has dwelt again and again on how fatally prescient they had turned out to be: for Sirius had not stopped to think, when it came to Harry.

And yet now, staring at the veil, Remus wonders.

Sirius had not considered the consequences. Sirius had rushed in. Sirius had died.

And yet hadn’t Sirius been right?

The future is always going to be darkness. That doesn't mean he shouldn’t step into it. Some things, it dawns on Remus, are worth the risk of being swallowed up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night.

Remus thinks of the hushed little circle of light in the library the night Sirius first kissed him. He thinks of his office at Hogwarts, stone walls and silence. He thinks of his tiny seaside house and he thinks of brackets. Sealing himself off: [birth] [love] [loss]. Protecting himself with words, with memorized phrases, with steady, regular type on square-edged sheets of paper. Boxes and brackets and narrow rooms. [Here lives Remus Lupin.]

[And then he thinks of sunlight, and of Sirius.]

[And then he takes a breath.]

[[And]]

[[]][ the n]

[  [        Re m u s ]]

                      [ s t  e p   s ]

                [ ]  [ t  h r o  u  g  h     t h e   v e   i    l ]

                                                                [a n  d

                                                                            t  h e  n

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Richard Siken's (much beloved by fic writers) "Scheherazade."
> 
> come say hi on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ebp-brain) and [dreamwidth](https://earlybloomingparentheses.dreamwidth.org)!


	10. What I do and what I dream include thee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone, for reading. <3
> 
> Thanks again to bigblackdog for all your thoughts and support, especially for talking with me as I realized the story should include this one last chapter.

a n  d

t  h e  n

there is nothing.

\---

 

_l_

 

darkness

 

_l u_

 

silence

 

_l u m_

 

v o  i d

 

_l u m o_

 

n o  t h    i n    g

 

**_l u m o s_ **

\---

a flare. _light._

darkness, then, but not only darkness. the darkness has an inside, and inside the darkness is a little circle of light. light, conjured by a word.

**_lumos_ **

**_lu_ **

**_lup_ **

**_lupi_ **

“Lupin,” Remus gasps.

Light. He is inside a circle of light. His name is Remus Lupin, and he knows the word to conjure light.

\---

“Mouth,” he says, and he has a mouth.

“Hands,” he says, and he has hands.

“Eyes,” he says, and he has eyes, and they peer into the fuzzy edges of his world, where the light gives way to darkness.

\---

Remus touches his face. It feels strange and cold and smooth. Like stone or marble. _There should be a scar there,_ he thinks, running his finger along his left cheek.

And then, there is.

_Wrinkles,_ he thinks, touching the corners of his eyes. Soft folds appear beneath his fingertips.

“This is my body,” he says hoarsely, into the darkness. And every ache and pain, every scar, every scratch, every graying hair and ragged fingernail is suddenly present, solid, real.

\---

Remus sits in the circle of light, knees pulled up to his chest. He is not ready to move out into the darkness. He does not think there is anything there to see. He is afraid he is all alone.

\---

Remus grows thirsty. This confuses him. If he were dead, would he be thirsty?

He remembers stepping through the veil. He doesn’t remember what happened after that. He remembers the light, which came after…nothing. After the veil and before the light, he remembers nothing.

There are no whispers anymore. There is no wind. Remus does not think there is any air, or that his skin is any particular temperature at all.

But he is thirsty.

“I need water,” he whispers. And then his mouth is open, and a cool liquid stream pours inside.

\---

Remus is standing in the circle of light. He is trying to see beyond it.

“What’s out there?” he asks. But his voice falls dull and flat, and nothing moves or speaks.

He takes a step into the darkness. Then another. His feet make no sound as he walks. He has no sense of walls or ceiling around him, but no sense of open air either. He is not afraid of running into something in the dark; there is nothing to run into. There is nothing in the dark.

\---

_hhhhhhh_

\---

Remus stops.

There is a sound.

Somewhere, in this vast nothing, someone is breathing.

Remus says sharply, convulsively: “Sirius?”

\---

He is crouched on the not-ground, arms clenched around himself. He is breathing hoarsely. There is no circle of light around him. Remus thinks this means he should not be visible, but he is.

He crouches down. Sirius does not seem to see him.

“Sirius,” Remus says, heart in his throat. “Sirius, it’s me. It’s Remus.”

And all at once Sirius’ head jerks up, and he looks wild-eyed into Remus’ face.

“Moony?”

\---

Remus has him in his arms. He is holding Sirius tightly. Sirius’ face is buried in Remus’ shoulder. Sirius is shuddering silently. Remus’ fingers dig into his clothes. Tattered, grey-brown clothes. Prison clothes.

“Is this what you wore in Azkaban?” he asks.

Sirius does not seem to have the words to answer. He clutches at Remus’ sweater—Remus is wearing a brown sweater, worn at the elbows, that he misplaced sometime in 1980.

“What do you see, Sirius?”

A noise in Sirius’ throat. Low, stifled, guttural. Remus thinks he is trying to speak.

“All right,” he says softly. “It’s all right. You can tell me what you see.”

“Nothing,” Sirius says, and then, struggling: “You.”

\---

Remus strokes Sirius’ hair and asks, “Where are we?”

Sirius shakes his head. “Don’t know,” he mutters.

Remus peers into the void. “I don’t either.” He runs his thumb over Sirius’ forehead, over and over again. Thoughtful, he asks, “Do you know the word to conjure light?”

A long, still pause. Then Sirius shakes his head again.

Curious.

\---

“Do you remember the tunnel?” Remus asks. “The secret passageway from Hogwarts to the cellar of Honeydukes?”

Uncertainly, Sirius says, “I don’t know.”

A little dart of pain pierces Remus’ chest, but he sets it gently aside. “I can’t exactly say that this place, wherever we are, reminds me of anywhere I’ve ever been. But if it did, I think it would remind me of that tunnel.” He runs his fingers through a lock of Sirius’ longish hair. He doesn’t think it’s any longer than when Sirius fell through the veil. “The tunnel was really dark. We had to use that floating lantern we stole from Filch. And it smelled sort of—damp, you know? And old, but not like the library. Musty, I guess, like dirt and stone.”

A tiny breath of air passes across his face. He inhales slowly, through his nose, and smells just a hint of something—of damp dirt, and old stone.

“The ceiling was low,” he says. “And the walls were narrow.”

Very slowly, Remus leans back. He falls for a split second, and then comes to a stop with a soft _thunk_ against a cold stone wall.

\---

He helps Sirius to his feet. “What…” Sirius says hoarsely, and then his hand touches stone.

“Let’s walk,” Remus says. His heart is in his mouth. “Down—down the tunnel.”

Hand in hand, they walk. Their progress is slow. Sirius can’t move very fast. After a short space of time, Remus feels the stone around them start to waver—to grow soft to the touch, almost immaterial, like it is made of cobwebs.

“Remus,” Sirius says urgently, frightened.

“I know.” Remus takes a breath. He wonders if this will work. “The passage is long. The walls keep going for a long time. And the ceiling gets lower. So low you have to duck.”

Their foreheads scrape against stone.

“Remus,” Sirius says, fingers convulsing in Remus’ grip. “Keep talking.”

\---

Remus talks. He describes the texture of the tunnel’s floor, the way he remembers it feeling beneath his feet. He describes the roughness of the walls, the way they felt cold against his fingers, and the low slope of the ceiling.

After about fifteen minutes, Remus can’t think of anything more to say.

“It’s just a tunnel,” he apologizes, “I don’t know what else to say about it.”

“Just keep talking,” Sirius says. His voice sounds a little clearer now. His grip on Remus’ hand is stronger. “Just talk. Tell me things.”

“I don’t know…”

“Tell me anything. Tell me about a place I’ve never seen before.”

An image flashes up in Remus’ head: salt spray, low clouds, dust on the windowsills.

\---

“It was by the sea,” he says. “On a cliff. Close enough that the wind sometimes sprayed drops of water on the windowpanes. They’d get crusted over with salt and I’d have to scrape them off.”

They are still walking. The tunnel is still there.

“I could hear the sea all the time. At first it seemed so loud. But by the end I didn’t notice anymore. Just a constant low roar. It felt like part of me eventually.”

Footsteps. Musty air.

“The house was always a little damp. There was a corner where the floorboards had gone sort of soft. I got used to the smell—it wasn’t a bad smell. Almost comforting. Earthy. I felt—it felt close. Like the air was a little heavier, a little like a blanket.

“The bed was in the corner of one of the two rooms and covered in a faded old quilt. Patchwork, in reds and creams. It had worn thin in a couple spots, so if you held it up to the light, you could see through it. And one corner was frayed. And there was a stain on a couple of patches—red flowers and a check pattern—that was light brown, maybe coffee, maybe tea. The bed…let’s see. The bedframe was wooden. Dark wood. The bedposts had round wooden balls on top. There was a scratch on the bottom left post.”

Remus and Sirius keep walking. Remus tries to remember everything as he speaks, every last detail.

“The bathroom was tiny, basically a cupboard. A tiny shower stall and an old toilet and sink. They’d been white, once, but they’d gone a bit off-color. I used a blue towel. Dark blue. Hung it over the shower door. I kept my toothbrush in a glass cup on the side of the sink. The cup barely fit and would slide off into the sink sometimes if I knocked against it.

“The kitchen…there was a pantry, full of bags of flour and sugar and jars of rice and pasta and dried beans. Some old jam that I think had been there for decades, with handwriting on it, spidery cursive, that read ‘gooseberry.’ The shelves were painted white and the paint had chipped a bit. There was a chipped spot that looked a little like Spain.

“I enchanted the icebox to stay cold. But sometimes it was cold enough outside to put things by the front door. The oven worked surprisingly well. It was an old Muggle oven, brown and shiny, with gas burners. The back left one was always a little too hot. I kept biggest pot on the stove because there wasn’t room in the cupboards for it. It was this old Dutch oven, ceramic, really heavy. It was yellow but the bottom was brown from all the cooking that had been done—not in a burned way, just—years and years of soups and things.

“Over the sink there was a big window and I could look out and see the headland. The wind came in through the windowpanes, a bit. Like in our flat—do you remember?”

Remus asks without thinking, but then he looks over at Sirius, pulse quickening. _Does_ Sirius remember?

But Sirius nods, slowly. “Yes. Yes, I remember that. We tried to charm them so they stayed sealed, but it didn’t work.”

Remus feels a great rush of relief. “Yes. Yes, and I couldn’t charm the ones in my house either. In the sitting room—well, really just the other half of the kitchen—they rattled a bit. The roof leaked over one of them whenever it rained. There was a leak in the bathroom, too, much worse.

“I kept the books out of the way of the rain—my uncle had built some shelves into the walls and there were old paperbacks. Yellowed pages, tiny type. I read them sitting in the brown armchair next to the shelf. It sagged and you could see the spring poking through one of the arms, but it was pretty comfortable.”

Sirius voice echoes hoarsely in the tunnel, joining the sound of their footfalls, regular and steady. “What were the books?”

“Hm?” Remus glances at him. “Oh. Well, let’s see if I can remember them all.” He runs his hand along the stone wall as they go, thinking.

“They were all Muggle books. _Paradise Lost._ Some Shakespeare— _Hamlet, Cymbeline, Richard II_ and _Richard III. The Tempest._ What else? Dickens— _Bleak House._ And _The Mystery of Edwin Drood._ That one’s unfinished, did you know? Oh, and other mysteries. Some Agatha Christie, some Conan Doyle. Some Dashiell Hammett, too.”

“Which ones?”

“Oh, erm… _The Thin Man._ And the Christies were, hm, _Murder on the Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Death on the Nile_ … _The Hollow._ A couple of Sherlock Holmes collections—the earliest one, and the last one. _Adventures_ and _Case-Book._ Oh, and another Hammett— _The Maltese Falcon._ Of course.”

“Of course.”

Remus gives a brief smile. “Borges. And Cortázar. _Labyrinths_ and _Hopscotch._ Oh, and a decent collection of George Eliot— _Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner._ Mmm…Sir Walter Scott, _Ivanhoe._ Stevenson— _Treasure Island._ Very British schoolboy type of thing. A few surprises, though. _Notes of a Native Son_ by James Baldwin. A collection of American poetry—Dickinson, Whitman, Frost. What else? Some children’s books, _Dr. Doolittle, Five Children and It, The Children of Green Knowe, The Wind in the Willows._ Oh— _Villette. The Turn of the Screw._ Oh, goodness, and this Harlequin romance novel called _Candle in the Morning._ ”

“Your favorite,” Sirius says, with the ghost of a smile.

Remus squeezes his hand as they walk on. “It did make for a refreshing change. No, actually…” He takes a deep breath. “My favorite was one of the Virginia Woolfs.”

“Oh, yes?”

Remus nods. “There was _Mrs. Dalloway,_ and _The Waves._ But my favorite was _To the Lighthouse._ ”

The tunnel ceiling seems to be getting lower, Remus thinks; he is having to crouch now. Sirius asks, “Why that one?”

Remus pauses. It feels strange, somehow, and vulnerable, to try and put it into words. “Well. It’s—so, not much happens, really, but everyone is gathered in this big house, and they—they sort of have these, these internal experiences. And then, well…” He hesitates. “There’s this chapter. Where time passes. And there are these…brackets…”

His voice trails off. They have reached the end of the tunnel.

A wall is before them: stone and dirt. Slowly, Remus looks up.

There is a trapdoor above their heads.

Their eyes meet. For a long time, neither one speaks.

“Well?” Sirius asks, finally.

Remus nods.

Together, they put their hands against the rough wood, and push.

\---

Light spills through. Nearly blinded by it, they cannot see as they clamber upwards. Remus hoists himself onto a wooden floor, then grasps Sirius’ skinny arms and helps him through. Sirius clambers onto the floorboards. When they look down, the trapdoor is gone.

When they look up, they are in a small two-room house by the sea.

\---

There is a brown stain on the patchwork quilt. There is a scratch on the bedpost. There is a well-used yellow Dutch oven on the stove, and a dark blue towel hung over the tiny shower door.

The sound of the sea pervades the room, a low constant crash of waves.

The air is damp and salt-tinged. Close.

It is all so familiar to Remus. And yet Sirius, thin and pale, standing over the counter where Remus kneaded bread for hours and hours and hours, alone with his thoughts, looks unutterably strange. The house never felt this _small_ before.

There is a copy of _To the Lighthouse_ open on the sagging brown armchair.

“Remus,” Sirius says slowly, “where are we?”

Remus looks around. It’s so bright outside the windows, and they have been in the dark for so long. He can’t make out any details.

“I don’t know.”

“Is this…” Sirius looks around. “Is this real?”

Remus swallows. It feels real. It _smells_ real. Everything is exactly as he just described it. But maybe that’s not a good sign.

“I think…” He walks over to Sirius and puts a hand on his lower back, grounding, calming himself and Sirius both. “I think there’s only one way to find out.”

Sirius nods. He turns to Remus and looks like he’s about to say something. Instead, he leans in and kisses him on the mouth.

“I love you,” he says. “You know that, right?”

Remus nods, tears springing to the corners of his eyes. He blinks them away. “I love you too.”

Together, they turn to face the closed front door. They take a deep breath. Remus reaches toward the knob.

And then they hear voices.

\---

Muffled speech, _have the key here somewhere, hang on,_ the sound of shuffling feet and a key sliding into the lock and then the knob turns and two people stand on the threshold—

“Tonks,” Remus says, shocked, looking into her heart-shaped face and wide startled eyes. And—

“ _Harry_ ,” Sirius breathes.

Harry blinks at them through his round glasses.

“What…” he begins. “ _How_ …”

“You fucking did it,” Tonks says. “Remus _fucking Lupin_ —” And she launches herself at him, at both of them, and grabs Harry and drags him in. The four of them embrace, unwieldy, absurd, so off-balance they fall in a heap to the floor.

Beyond them, beyond the open door, green-sprouting land stretches to the edge of the cliff, rocks and heather and tiny flowers, and beyond that, glinting blue and bright in the sun, is the wide-open sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, _Sonnets from the Portuguese,_ XXVIII.
> 
> _The widest land_  
>  Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine  
> With pulses that beat double. What I do  
> And what I dream include thee, as the wine  
> Must taste of its own grapes. 

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ebp-brain) and [dreamwidth](https://earlybloomingparentheses.dreamwidth.org)!


End file.
